The Dwarfs 



fashion, that, among the insects and very 

 likely elsewhere, dwarfishness is the result of 

 incomplete nutrition and not in any way the 

 effect of predisposition. 



Let us suppose an impossible case, or at 

 least one extremely difficult to realize; let us 

 imagine that, having obtained by starvation a 

 few couples of Cetoniae, we were able to keep 

 them alive under favourable conditions. 

 Would they found a family? And what 

 would their offspring be like ? The insect, in 

 all probability, would not reply to our ques- 

 tion, even though entreated by long perse- 

 verance; but the plant answers us readily. 



On the paths in my two acres of pebbles, 

 at spots where a little moisture lingers, there 

 grows in April a familiar plant, the whitlow 

 grass {Draba verna^ Lin.). There is but 

 little nourishment in this ungrateful trodden 

 soil, hard with gravel, and the whitlow grass 

 may be regarded as the equivalent of my 

 famished Cetoniae. From a flat pattern of 

 sickly leaves rises a single stem, no thicker 

 than a hair, barely an Inch In height and with 

 few ramifications or none, which neverthe- 

 less ripens Its sllicles, often reduced to one 

 alone. Here, in short, I have a little garden 

 of dwarf plants, the children of dearth. 

 253 



