ble, and
often to a scandalous degree. However meagre the contents of the pod
there is a superabundance of consumers. Dividing the sum of the eggs
upon such or such a pod by that of the peas contained therein, I find
there are five to eight claimants for each pea; I have found ten, and
there is no reason why this prodigality should not go still further.
Many are called, but few are chosen! What is to become of all these
supernumeraries, perforce excluded from the banquet for want of space?

The eggs are of a fairly bright amber yellow, cylindrical in form,
smooth, and rounded at the ends. Their length is at most a twenty-fifth
of an inch. Each is affixed to the pod by means of a slight network of
threads of coagulated albumen. Neither wind nor rain can loosen their
hold.

The mother not infrequently emits them two at a time, one above the
other; not infrequently, also, the uppermost of the two eggs hatches
before the other, while the latter fades and perishes. What was lacking
to this egg, that it should fail to produce a grub? Perhaps a bath of
sunlight; the incubating heat of which the outer egg has robbed it.
Whether on account of the fact that it is shadowed by the other egg, or
for other reasons, the elder of the eggs in a group of two rarely
follows the normal course, but perishes on the pod, dead without having
lived.

There are exceptions to this premature end; sometimes the two eggs
develop equally well; but such cases are exceptional, so that the
Bruchid family would be reduced to about half its dimensions if the
binary system were the rule. To the detriment of our peas and to the
advantage of the beetle, the eggs are commonly laid one by one and in
isolation.

A recent emergence is shown by a little sinuous ribbon-like mark, pale
or whitish, where the skin of the pod is raised and withered, which
starts from the egg and is the work of the new-born larva; a
sub-epidermic tunnel along which the grub works its way, while seeking a
point from which it can escape into a pea. This point once attained, the
larva, which is scarcely a twenty-fifth of an inch in length, and is
white with a black head, perforates the envelope and plunges into the
capacious hollow of the pod.

It has reached the peas and crawls upon the nearest. I have observed it
with the magnifier. Having explored the green globe, its new world, it
begins to sink a well perpendicularly into the sphere. I have often seen
it half-way in, wriggling