seemed, came a change in their behavior. No longer 

 were they attracted to the brighter sides of the 

 tanks; gradually their numbers ceased to frequent 

 the surface; finally all but a few stragglers slunk 

 to the bottom and hovered in the regions more 

 remote from the light. 



Examination now showed that many of them 

 had formed on the side of their bodies five bud- 

 ding prominences, while in others, more advanced, 

 these buds were augmented and formed a pretty 

 rosette. As the hours passed, each rosette enlarged, 

 the pluteus body meanwhile diminishing in sub- 

 stance and size. Soon all trace of the larva was 

 gone; the rosette remained, but now the flower- 

 like figure of each individual unit had changed to 

 an asteroid : in my little laboratory universe, a new 

 star was born . . . 



It seems singularly in keeping with my thoughts 

 as I set down these last lines, that in looking up 

 through the semi-darkness of the room into the 

 warm and brilliant night, I see a falling meteor 

 streak its course across the skylight. But to me it 

 is other than a fiery fragment of space, it is a sym- 

 bol of that awful alchemy which by the same 

 universal formula contrives the hatching of a ser- 



[108] 



