I have recorded four.

On the other hand, one isolated couple has furnished me with a family of eighty.

Consider only the half of this number--supposing the sexes to be equal in number--and at the end of a year the couples issued from this original pair would be represented by the fortieth power of forty; in larvae they would represent the frightful total of more than five millions.

What a mountain of haricots would be ravaged by such a legion! The industry of the larvae reminds us at every point what we have learned from the _Bruchus pisi_.

Each grub excavates a lodging in the mass of the bean, respecting the epidermis, and preparing a circular trap-door which the adult can easily open with a push at the moment of emergence.
At the termination of the larval phase the lodgements are betrayed on the surface of the bean by so many shadowy circles.