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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: those who write or who read are familiar with the habits and morals of
an insect called the "paper-louse," an insect of really marvellous
celerity and behavior; it undergoes its mysterious transformations in
a ream of white paper which you have carefully put away; you see it
gliding and frisking along in its shining robe, that looks like
isinglass or mica,--truly a little fish of another element.
The borer is the despair of the land-owner; he works underground; no
Sicilian vespers for him until he becomes a cockchafer! If the
populations only realized with what untold disasters they are
threatened in case they let the cockchafers and the caterpillars get
the upper hand, they would pay more attention than they do to
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