But is the grub capable of fasting for any length of time when once hatched?  It is doubtful.  The little I have seen tells me that the newborn grub must establish itself in the midst of its food as quickly as possible, and that it perishes unless it can do so.  I am therefore of opinion that such eggs as are deposited in immature pods are lost.  However, the race will hardly suffer by such a loss, so fertile is the little beetle.  We shall see directly how prodigal the female is of her eggs, the majority of which are destined to perish.

The important part of the maternal task is completed by the end of May, when the shells are swollen by the expanding peas, which have reached their final growth, or are but little short of it.  I was anxious to see the female Bruchus at work in her quality of Curculionid, as our classification declares her.[4] The other weevils are Rhyncophora, beaked insects, armed with a drill with which to prepare the hole in which the egg is laid.  The Bruchus possesses only a short snout or muzzle, excellently adapted for eating soft tissues, but valueless as a drill.

The method of installing the family is consequently absolutely different.  There are no industrious preparations as with the Balinidae, the Larinidae, and the Rhynchitides.  Not being equipped with a long oviscapt, the mother sows her eggs in the open, with no protection against the heat of the sun and the variations of temperature.  Nothing could be simpler, and nothing more perilous to the eggs, in the absence of special characteristics which, would enable them to resist the alternate trials of heat and cold, moisture and drought.

In the caressing sunlight of ten o’clock in the morning, the mother runs up and down the chosen pod, first on one side, then on the other, with a jerky, capricious, unmethodical gait.  She repeatedly extrudes a short oviduct, which oscillates right and left as though to graze the skin of the pod.  An egg follows, which is abandoned as soon as laid.

A hasty touch of the oviduct, first here, then there, on the green skin of the pea-pod, and that is all.  The egg is left there, unprotected, in the full sunlight.  No choice of position is made such as might assist the grub when it seeks to penetrate its larder.  Some eggs are laid on the swellings created by the peas beneath; others in the barren valleys which separate them.  The first are close to the peas, the second at some distance from them.  In short, the eggs of the Bruchus are laid at random, as though on the wing.

We observe a still more serious vice:  the number of eggs is out of all proportion to the number of peas in the pod.  Let us note at the outset that each grub requires one pea; it is the necessary ration, and is largely sufficient for one larva, but is not enough for several, nor even for two.  One pea to each grub, neither more nor less, is the unchangeable rule.

We should expect to find signs of a procreative economy which would impel the female to take into account the number of peas contained in the pod which she has just explored; we might expect her to set a numerical limit on her eggs in conformity with that of the peas available.  But no such limit is observed.  The rule of one pea to one grub is always contradicted by the multiplicity of consumers.