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Updated: May 16, 2025
More than the jay, more than the field-mouse, the elephant-beetle has contributed to reduce the superfluity of acorns. Presently man arrives, busied in the interest of his pig. In my village it is quite an important event when the municipal hoardings announce the day for opening the municipal woods for the gathering of acorns.
Repeated, tested, and probed in every imaginable way, the child's experiment has become one of the forces of the world. The observer must neglect nothing; for he never knows what may develop out of the humblest fact. So again we will ask: by what process did the egg of the elephant-beetle reach a point so far from the orifice in the acorn?
Its presence tells me that the acorn is inhabited, or at least that it has been prepared for the reception of the egg; its absence tells me that the acorn has not yet been appropriated. The elephant-beetle undoubtedly draws the same conclusions. I see matters from on high, with a comprehensive glance, assisted at will by the magnifying-glass.
If it did so the delicate ovum would certainly be destroyed, crushed in the attempt to thrust it down a narrow passage half choked with debris. This is very perplexing. My embarrassment will be shared by all readers who are acquainted with the structure of the elephant-beetle.
Such nutriment, juicy and easy of digestion, like all nascent organic matter, is only found in this particular spot; and it is only there, between the cup and the base of the cotyledons, that the elephant-beetle establishes her egg. The insect knows to a nicety the position of the portions best adapted to the feeble stomach of the newly hatched larva.
Torn away from her foothold, the suspended insect vainly struggles in air; nowhere can her feet, those safety anchors, find a hold. She starves at the end of her snout, for lack of foothold whereby to extricate herself. Like the artisans in our factories, the elephant-beetle is sometimes the victim of her tools. Let us wish her good luck, and sure feet, careful not to slip, and proceed.
I cannot see that the insect has any other implement capable of reaching this remote hiding-place. Nevertheless, we must hastily reject such an absurd explanation as a last, desperate resort. The elephant-beetle certainly does not lay its egg in the open and seize it in its beak.
I crouch beside it, sheltered from the storm behind a mass of underwood, and watch operations. Shod with adhesive sandals which later on, in my laboratory, will allow it rapidly to climb a vertical sheet of glass, the elephant-beetle is solidly established on the smooth, steep curvature of the acorn. It is working its drill.
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