Rationing According to Sex 



aggerated proportions; you can see that the 

 additional food has profited them to some 

 small extent. 



The cells with abundant provisions, re- 

 duced to a half or a third by my intervention, 

 contain cocoons as small as the male cocoons, 

 pale, translucent and limp, whereas the 

 normal cocoons are dark-brown, opaque and 

 firm to the touch. These, we perceive at 

 once, are the work of starved, anaemic 

 weavers, who, failing to satisfy their appe- 

 tite and having eaten the last grain of pollen, 

 have, before dying, done their best with their 

 poor little drop of silk. Those cocoons 

 which correspond with the smallest allowance 

 of food contain only a dead and shrivelled 

 larva; others, in whose case the provisions 

 were less markedly decreased, contain fe- 

 males in the adult form, but of very diminu- 

 tive size, comparable with that of the males, 

 or even smaller. As for the controls which 

 I was careful to leave, they confirm the fact 

 that I had males in the part near the orifice 

 of the reed and females in the part near the 

 knot closing the channel. 



Is this enough to dispose of the very im- 

 probable supposition that the determination 

 of the sex depends on the quantity of food? 

 Strictly speaking, there is still one door open 

 231 



