“Yes, how does it manage to eat?” Emile chimed in. “I should be in a terrible fix if I had to take my food through a straw as long as myself.”
“The weevil is obliged to exercise moderation; at the most it drinks with its beak only a few drops of sap from the hazelnut-tree it inhabits. But if the weevil is temperate in its diet, the larva of the weevil eats with a good appetite: it demands the whole kernel of a hazelnut, and it is on purpose to give the larva this food that the weevil is provided with the long beak that astonishes you. The perfect insect, I repeat, lives much more for its future family than for itself, its equipment being designed with reference to the future of its young. If the weevil had to think merely of its own food its trumpet would be highly inconvenient; but it must above all look out for the well-being of its larvæ, and to make provision for that, the creature’s long and slender [[323]]beak is a wonderful tool, serving as a fine gimlet for boring through the nutshell so that the egg may be laid in the very meat itself and the larva be hatched out in the lap of plenty.”
“That must be a long, hard job for so fine a gimlet,” Jules remarked.
“Not at all. The tiny mandibles at the end of the trumpet bite the shell almost as easily as an edged tool of steel would do it; and moreover the weevil chooses its time. It is in May, when the hazelnuts are beginning to grow and their shells are soft, that the task is undertaken. The insect attacks the nut at the base through the green covering called the cup. As soon as the hole is made, an egg is laid inside the nut and in a week the larva is hatched out. It is a legless worm, white with a red head. As the grub eats very little at first, the hazelnut continues to grow and its kernel to ripen, though gnawed little by little. When August comes, the store of provision is exhausted and the wormy nut lies on the ground. Then the worm, its mandibles strong by this time, makes a round hole in the empty shell and, leaving the nut, buries itself in the ground, where it undergoes transformation the following spring.”
“When I am cracking nuts with my teeth,” said Emile, “I once in a while bite into something bitter and soft.”
“That is the grub of the weevil.”
“Pah! The nasty thing!” [[324]]
“How can I keep the creatures off my hazelnut-trees?” asked Louis.
“That is very simple. Gather the wormy nuts, which sooner or later fall to the ground just as does fruit attacked by insects. If they are not pierced with a large hole the worm is still there. By burning them you destroy the weevils of the following year.”
“But this year’s weevils will be left.”