A Weevil Host Insects have been scarce, yet some few
of the most per- nicious have flourished beyond credence. Some of us went forth recently on to a spacious Common to collect a few gorse seeds. We opened pod after pod. In each and every one was found a little brown dust and a company of weevils. Just here and there was a twisted pod bearing witness that real seeds had been ejected (and how effective that rifled catapult is !) but they were rare ; and in twenty minutes we had not collected twenty seeds. The numbers of the weevils, all apparently of the same breed, must have amounted to millions. Incidentally, it is surprising how rarely, one finds a seedling gorse and much more rarely a seedling juniper on this Common. One of the few mistakes in natural history that the careful Tennyson ever made was to suggest that one seed in fifty is a rough estimate of seedling success. He was right to alter the fifty to "myriads" in the second edition. The junipers have been heavy with seed every year within my recollection for a generation or so ; and I have never yet found a seedling. Does one seed in a hundred thousand germinate successfully ?
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