More Beetles 



My experiments in starvation were far from 

 obtaining such results with the Sacred Beetle 

 and the Cetonia. 



I collect the seeds from the heads of the 

 sickliest of these plants and sow them in good 

 soil. Next spring, the dwarfishness disap- 

 pears at once; the direct descendants of the 

 abortive plants produce ample radiating pat- 

 terns, multiple stalks reaching to a height of 

 four inches or more and numerous ramifica- 

 tions, rich in silicles. The normal condition 

 has returned. 



If they had had enough energy to pro- 

 create their species, my dwarf insects, result- 

 ing from my artifices or from a casual con- 

 course of enfeebling circumstances, would do 

 as much. They would repeat what the whit- 

 low grass has told us : that dwarfishness is 

 an accident which heredity does not hand 

 down, any more than it hands down knock- 

 knees, or bow-legs, or the hunchback's hump 

 or the stump of the one-armed cripple. 



254 



