all of a narrowly limited fertility, because the balls of dung, the dead
or paralyzed insects, or the buried corpses of animals on which their
offspring are nourished are provided only at the cost of laborious
efforts.

The ordinary bluebottle, on the contrary, which lays her eggs upon
butcher's meat or carrion, lays them in enormous batches. Trusting in
the inexhaustible riches represented by the corpse, she is prodigal of
offspring, and takes no account of numbers. In other cases the provision
is acquired by audacious brigandage, which exposes the newly born
offspring to a thousand mortal accidents. In such cases the mother
balances the chances of destruction by an exaggerated flux of eggs.
Such is the case with the Meloides, which, stealing the goods of others
under conditions of the greatest peril, are accordingly endowed with a
prodigious fertility.

The Bruchus knows neither the fatigues of the laborious, obliged to
limit the size of her family, nor the misfortunes of the parasite,
obliged to produce an exaggerated number of offspring. Without painful
search, entirely at her ease, merely moving in the sunshine over her
favorite plant, she can insure a sufficient provision for each of her
offspring; she can do so, yet is foolish enough to over-populate the pod
of the pea; a nursery insufficiently provided, in which the great
majority will perish of starvation. This ineptitude is a thing I cannot
understand; it clashes too completely with the habitual foresight of the
maternal instinct.

I am inclined to believe that the pea is not the original food plant of
the Bruchus. The original plant must rather have been the bean, one seed
of which is capable of supporting a dozen or more larvae. With the