By what aberration does the mother abandon her children to starvation on this totally insufficient vegetable?
Why so many grubs to each pea when one pea is sufficient only for one grub?
Matters are not so arranged in the general balance-sheet of life.

A certain foresight seems to rule over the ovary so that the number of mouths is in proportion to the abundance or scarcity of the food consumed.

The Scarabaeus, the Sphex, the Necrophorus, and other insects which prepare and preserve alimentary provision for their families, are all of a narrowly limited fertility, because the balls of dung, the dead or paralysed insects, or the buried corpses of animals on which their offspring are nourished are provided only at the cost of laborious efforts.
The ordinary bluebottle, on the contrary, which lays her eggs upon butcher's meat or carrion, lays them in enormous batches.

Trusting in the inexhaustible riches represented by the corpse, she is prodigal of offspring, and takes no account of numbers.

In other cases the provision is acquired by audacious brigandage, which exposes the newly born offspring to a thousand mortal accidents.