It is not thus that matters are arranged in life’s general balance-sheet. A certain foresight rules the ovaries and makes them adjust the number of eaters to the abundance or scarcity of the thing eaten. The Sacred Beetle, the Sphex-wasp, the Burying-beetle and the other manufacturers of preserved provisions for the family set close limits to their fertility, because the soft loaves of their baking, the baskets containing their game and the contents of their sepulchral retting-vat are all obtained at the cost of laborious and often unproductive efforts. The Bluebottle, on the contrary, heaps her eggs in bundles. Trusting in the inexhaustible wealth of a corpse, she lavishes her maggots without counting the number. At other times, the provision is obtained by crafty brigandage, exposing the new-born offspring to a thousand fatal accidents. Then the mother makes up for the chances of destruction by an excessive outpouring of eggs. This is the case with the Oil-beetles, who, stealing the property of others under very parlous conditions, are for that reason endowed with prodigious fertility. The Bruchus knows neither the fatigues of the hard worker, obliged to restrict her family, nor the woes of the parasite, obliged to go to the other extreme. Without costly researches, entirely at her ease, merely by strolling in the sun over her favourite plant, she can ensure an adequate provision for each of her children; she can do this, and yet the mad creature takes it into her head to over-populate the pea-pod, a niggardly baby-farm in which the great majority will die of starvation. This folly passes my understanding: it clashes so utterly with the usual perspicacity of the maternal instinct. I am therefore inclined to believe that the pea was not the Bruchus’ original share in the distribution of the earth’s gifts. It must rather have been the bean, one seed of which is capable of entertaining half a dozen visitors and more. With a seed of this size, the startling disproportion between the number of the insect’s eggs and the foodstuffs available disappears. Besides, there is not a doubt that, of our various culinary acquisitions, the broad bean is the earliest in date. Its exceptional dimensions and its pleasant flavour have certainly attracted man’s attention since the most remote times. It is a ready-made mouthful, of great value to the hungry tribe, which would have hastened to secure its increase by sowing it in the patch of garden beside the house, a hut of wattled branches plastered with mud. This was the beginning of agriculture.