The Dwarfs 



adults such as my hunts in the meadows never 

 yielded, dwarfs, hardly larger than a thumb- 

 nail, but correctly shaped in every other 

 respect. 



Let me quote some exact figures. Each 

 of them measures nineteen millimetres ^ 

 from the edge of the clypeus to the tip of the 

 abdomen. The smallest specimen in my 

 boxes, as the freedom of the fields made him, 

 measures twenty-six.^ The products of my 

 experiments, fed upon half rations, are there- 

 fore only half the bulk of the normal Beetle 

 chosen from among the smallest. This is 

 also approximately the ratio between the full 

 and the reduced diet. The extensible mould 

 of the organism has reproduced the propor- 

 tion of the substance at its disposal. 



My intervention has just created dwarfs; 

 treatment by starvation has given me abor- 

 tions. I am not excessively proud of it, 

 though I arn glad to have learned by experi- 

 ment that dwarfishness, at all events in the 

 insects, is not a matter of predisposition and 

 heredity but a mere accident caused by de- 

 ficient nourishment. 



What then had happened to the little Min- 



I % inch. — translator's Note. 



I I inch. — Translator's Note. 



245 



