The Life of the Grasshopper 



of the seasons, will become factory-work, 

 yielding economical and safe returns. 



Then chemistry will step in, with its legion 

 of cunning reagents. It will turn every- 

 thing into nutritious matter, in a highly con- 

 centrated form, capable of being assimilated 

 in its entirety and leaving hardly any foul 

 residue. A loaf of bread will be a pill; a 

 rumpsteak a drop of jelly. Of agricultural 

 labour, the inferno of barbarian times, no- 

 thing will remain but a memory, of interest 

 only to the historians. The last Sheep and 

 the last Ox will figure, neatly stuffed, as curi- 

 osities in our museums, together with the 

 Mammoth dug up from the Siberian ice- 

 fields. 



All that old lumber — herds and flocks, 

 seeds, fruits and vegetables — is doomed to 

 disappear some day. Progress demands it, 

 we are told; and the chemist's retort, which, 

 in its presumptuous fashion, recognizes no- 

 thing as impossible, repeats the assertion. 



This golden age of foodstuffs leaves me 

 very incredulous. When it is a question of 

 obtaining some new toxin, science displays 

 alarming ingenuity. Our laboratory collec- 

 tions are veritable arsenals of poisons. 

 When the object is to invent a still in which 



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