or THE FAEM AI^D GARDEI^. 



59 



the i^od, and the mother beetle displays no particular 

 sagacity in the number which she consigns to each^ for I 

 have often counted twice as many eggs as there were 

 young peas, and the larvae from some of these eggs, would 

 of course have to perish, as only one can be fully 

 developed in each pea. The newly hatched larva is of a 

 deep yellow color, with a black head, and it makes a 

 direct cut through the pod into the nearest pea, the hole 

 soon filling up in the pod, and leaving but a mere speck, 

 not so large as a pin hole, in the pea. The larva feeds 

 and grows apace, and generally avoids the germ of the 

 future sprout, perhaps because it is distasteful, so that 

 most of the buggy peas will germiuate as readily as 

 those that have been untouched. When full grown, this 

 larva presents the appearance of figure 37, c, and Avith 

 wonderful precognition *of its future wants, eats a 

 circular hole on one side of the pea, and leaves only the 

 thin hull as a covering. It then retires, and lines its 

 cell with a thin and smooth layer of paste, pushing aside 

 and eutirely excluding all excrement, and in this cell it 

 assumes the j^upa state, (fig. 37, f/,) and eventually 

 becomes a beetle, which, when ready to issue, has only to 

 eat its way through the thin piece of the hull, which the 

 larva had left covering the hole. It has been proved that 

 the beetle would die if it had not during its larval life 

 prepared this passage way, for Earnest Menault asserts 

 that the beetle dies when the hole is pasted over with a 

 piece of paper, even thinner than the hull itself. 



Remedies aj^d Preyektives. — Sometimes, and 

 especially when the summer has been hot and prolonged, 

 many of the beetles will issue from the peas in the fall of 

 the same year that they were born, but as a more general 

 rule they remain in the peas during winter, and do not 

 issue till new vines are gi'owing. Thus many yet remain 

 in the seed peas until they are planted, and especially is 



