In such cases the mother balances the chances of destruction by an exaggerated flux of eggs.

Such is the case with the Meloides, which, stealing the goods of others under conditions of the greatest peril, are accordingly endowed with a prodigious fertility.
The Bruchus knows neither the fatigues of the laborious, obliged to limit the size of her family, nor the misfortunes of the parasite, obliged to produce an exaggerated number of offspring.

Without painful search, entirely at her ease, merely moving in the sunshine over her favourite plant, she can ensure a sufficient provision for each of her offspring; she can do so, yet is foolish enough to over-populate the pod of the pea; a nursery insufficiently provided, in which the great majority will perish of starvation.

This ineptitude is a thing I cannot understand: it clashes too completely with the habitual foresight of the maternal instinct.
I am inclined to believe that the pea is not the original food plant of the Bruchus.

The original plant must rather have been the bean, one seed of which is capable of supporting half a dozen or more larvae.