To these experiments in the open air I add others under glass. I place in long, narrow flasks fresh pods hanging from their stalks, some green, others mottled with crimson and containing seeds which are nearly ripe. Each flask receives its complement of Weevils. This time I obtain eggs, but they do not inspire me with much hope: the mother has laid them on the sides of the flasks and not on the pods. No matter: they hatch. For a few days I see the grubs roaming about, exploring the pods and the glass with equal zeal. In the end they all die, from the first to the last, without touching the food provided. The conclusion to be drawn is obvious: the young and tender haricot is not the thing for them. Unlike the Pea-weevil, the Haricot-weevil refuses to entrust her family to beans that are not hardened by age and desiccation; she declines to stop on my seed-patch, because she does not find the provisions which she requires. Then what does she want? She wants old, hard beans, which clatter on the ground like little pebbles. I will satisfy her. I place in my flasks some very hard, tough pods, which have been long dried in the sun. This time the family prospers; the grubs bore through the parched shell, reach the seeds, enter them; and henceforth all goes well as well can be. To all appearances, this is how the Weevil invades the farmer’s granary. Some haricots are left standing in the fields until both plants and pods, baked by the sun, are perfectly dry. This will make them easier to beat in order to separate the beans. It is now that the Weevil, finding things as she wants them, begins her laying. By getting in his crop a little late, the peasant gets the marauder into the bargain. But the Bruchus attacks more especially the seeds in our stores. Copying the Corn-weevil, who eats the wheat in our granaries and disregards the cereal swaying in the ear, in the same way she abhors the tender bean and prefers to make her home in the peace and darkness of our warehouses. She is a formidable enemy of the corn-chandler rather than of the farmer. What a fury of destruction, once the ravager is installed amidst our hoards of beans! My flasks proclaim the fact aloud. A single haricot-bean harbours a numerous family, often as many as twenty. And not only one generation exploits it, but quite three or four in the year. So long as any edible matter remains within the skin, so long do new consumers settle down in it, until in the end the haricot becomes a loathsome sugar-plum stuffed with stercoral droppings. The skin, which the grubs refuse to eat, is a sack pierced with round holes numbering as many as the inhabitants that have left it; the contents yield to the pressure of the finger and spread into a disgusting paste of floury excreta. The bean is a complete wreck.