My observations are unanimous on this point.  The number of eggs deposited on one pod always exceeds the number of peas available, and often to a scandalous degree.  However meager 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 newborn 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 halfway in, wriggling its tail in the effort to work the quicker.  In a short time the grub disappears and is at home.  The point of entry, minute, but always easily recognizable by its brown coloration on the pale green background of the pea, has no fixed location; it may be at almost any point on the surface of the pea, but an exception is usually made of the lower half; that is, the hemisphere whose pole is formed by the supporting stem.