The peril would be much greater did the insect pass from leguminous seeds to cereals, as at first I feared it might. But it does not do so; imprisoned in my bottles together with a handful of wheat, barley, rice, or maize, the Bruchus invariably perished and left no offspring. The result was the same with oleaginous seeds: such as castor-oil and sunflower. Nothing outside the bean family is of any use to the Bruchus. Thus limited, its portion is none the less considerable, and it uses and abuses it with the utmost energy. The eggs are white, slender, and cylindrical. There is no method in their distribution, no choice in their deposition. The mother lays them singly or in little groups, on the walls of the jar as well as on the haricots. In her negligence she will even lay them on maize, coffee, castor-oil seeds, and other seeds, on which the newly born grubs will promptly perish, not finding them to their taste. What place has maternal foresight here? Abandoned no matter where in the heap of seeds, the eggs are always in place, as it is left to the grub to search and to find the points of invasion. In five days at most the egg is hatched. A little white creature with a red-brown head emerges. It is a mere speck of a creature, just visible to the naked eye. Its body is thickened forward, to give more strength to its implements--its mandibles--which have to perforate the hard substance of the dry bean, which is as tough as wood. The larvae of the Buprestis and the Capricornis, which burrow in the trunks of trees, are similarly shaped. Directly it issues from the egg the wriggling creature makes off at random with an activity we should hardly expect in one so young. It wanders hither and thither, eager to find food and shelter as soon as possible. Within twenty-four hours it has usually attained both. I see the tiny grub perforate the horny skin that covers the cotyledons; I watch its efforts; I surprise it sunk half-way in the commencement of a burrow, at the mouth of which is a white floury powder, the waste from the mandibles. It works its way inward and buries itself in the heart of the seed. It will emerge in the adult form in the course of about five weeks, so rapid is its evolution. This hasty development allows of several generations in the year. I have recorded four. On the other hand, one isolated couple has furnished me with a family of eighty. Consider only the half of this number--supposing the sexes to be equal in number--and at the end of a year the couples issued from this original pair would be represented by the fortieth power of forty; in larvae they would represent the frightful total of more than five millions. What a mountain of haricots would be ravaged by such a legion!