THE CELL AND ITS ACTIVITIES 21 



Many years ago the baby lions in the London zoological 

 gardens died in numbers in spite of the fact that the 

 animals were well housed and given expensive food. 

 In Dublin, where conditions were not supposed to be 

 so good, the young lions lived. It turned out that the 

 death of the London lions was owing to a rickety con- 

 dition of the base of the skull, and this in turn to a 

 deficiency of lime in the milk of the lionesses. This 

 deficiency appeared to be owing to the fact that the 

 beasts had been fed on good cuts of meat, with too 

 little bone. In Dublin, where they could not afford 

 to treat them so well (as they considered it), they 

 gave them more bone and less meat, with the good 

 results already mentioned. Thus, while the cell can 

 do marvelous tricks of conjuring, there are limits to 

 its powers. 



