THE PEA-WEEVIL 263 



The important part of the maternal task is completed 

 by the end of May, when the shells are swollen by the 

 expanding peas, which have reached their final growth, 

 or are but little short of it. I was anxious to see the 

 female Bruchus at work in her quality of Curculionid, as 

 our classification declares her.^ The other weevils are 

 Rhyncophora, beaked insects, armed with a drill with 

 which to prepare the hole in which the egg is laid. The 

 Bruchus possesses only a short snout or muzzle, excel- 

 lently adapted for eating soft tissues, but valueless as a 

 drill. 



The method of installing the family is consequently 

 absolutely different. There are no industrious prepara- 

 tions as with the Balinidae, the Larinidae, and the 

 Rhynchitides. Not being equipped with a long ovi- 

 scapt, the mother sows her eggs in the open, with no 

 protection against the heat of the sun and the variations 

 of temperature. 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 eggs follows, which is 

 abandoned as soon as laid. 



' This classification is now superseded; the Pea and Bean 

 Weevils — Bruchus pisi and Bruchus lenti — are classed as Bruchidae, 

 in the series of Phytophaga. Most of the other weevils are classed 

 as Curculionidae, series Rhyncophora.— [Trans.] 



