The evil would become still greater if, as I feared at first, the ever-greedy insect passed from leguminous seeds to cereals. This it does not do. When installed in my jars with a heap of wheat, barley, rice or maize, the Bruchus invariably dies without offspring. The result is the same with horny seeds, such as coffee-beans; with oleaginous seeds, such as those of the castor-oil-plant or of the sunflower. Nothing outside the legumina suits the Bruchus. Notwithstanding these limitations, its portion is a very extensive one; and it uses and abuses it with the utmost energy. The eggs are white and drawn out into a tiny cylinder. They are scattered anyhow and anywhere. The mother lays them either singly or in little groups, on the sides of the jar as well as on the haricots. Her heedlessness is such that she will even fasten them to maize, castor-oil-seeds, coffee-beans or other seeds, on which the family are doomed soon to perish, finding no food to their liking. What is the use of maternal foresight here? Left no matter where, under the heaps of beans, the eggs are always well-placed, for it is the new-born grubs’ business to seek and find the spots at which to effect an entrance. The egg hatches in five days at most. Out of it comes a tiny white creature, with a red head. It is a mere speck, just visible to the naked eye. The grub is swollen in front, to give more strength to its tool, the chisel of its mandibles, which has to break through the tough seed, hard as wood. The larvæ of the Buprestes and the Capricorns, which tunnel through the trunks of trees, are similarly shaped. As soon as it is born, the crawling worm makes off at random, with an activity which we should hardly expect in one so young. It roams about, anxious to find board and lodging as soon as possible. It attains its object, for the most part, within the twenty-four hours. I see the worm making a hole in the tough skin of the seed; I watch its efforts; I catch sight of it half-sunk in the beginning of a gallery whose entrance is dusty with white flour, the refuse from the boring. It works its way in and penetrates into the heart of the seed. Its evolution is so rapid that it will emerge in the adult form in five weeks’ time. This hasty development permits several generations to take place in the course of the year. I have seen four. On the other hand, an isolated couple supplied me with a family of eighty. Let us consider only half this number, to allow for the two sexes, which I take to be equally represented. At the end of the year, the couples resulting from this source will therefore be represented by the fourth power of forty, reaching in terms of larvæ the frightful total of over two and a half millions. What a heap of haricots such a legion would destroy!