Nothing
could be simpler, and nothing more perilous to the eggs, in the absence
of special characteristics which, would enable them to resist the
alternate trials of heat and cold, moisture and drought.
In the caressing sunlight of ten o'clock in the morning, the mother runs
up and down the chosen pod, first on one side, then on the other, with
a jerky, capricious, unmethodical gait. She repeatedly extrudes a short
oviduct, which oscillates right and left as though to graze the skin of
the pod. An egg follows, which is abandoned as soon as laid.
A hasty touch of the oviduct, first here, then there, on the green skin
of the pea-pod, and that is all. The egg is left there, unprotected, in
the full sunlight. No choice of position is made such as might assist
the grub when it seeks to penetrate its larder. Some eggs are laid on
the swellings created by the peas beneath; others in the barren valleys
which separate them. The first are close to the peas, the second at some
distance from them. In short, the eggs of the Bruchus are laid at
random, as though on the wing.
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