The Life of the Spider 



mal directly and charge it with activity, even 

 as the battery charges an accumulator with 

 power? Why not live on sun, seeing that, 

 after all, we find naught but sun in the fruits 

 which we consume? 



Chemical science, that bold revolutionary, 

 promises to provide us with synthetic food- 

 stuffs. The laboratory and the factory will 

 take the place of the farm. Why should not 

 physical science step in as well? It would 

 leave the preparation of plastic food to the 

 chemist's retorts; it would reserve for itself 

 that of energy-producing food, which, reduced 

 to its exact terms, ceases to be matter. With 

 the aid of some ingenious apparatus, it would 

 pump into us our daily ration of solar energy, 

 to be later expended in movement, whereby 

 the machine would be kept going without the 

 often painful assistance of the stomach and 

 its adjuncts. What a delightful world, where 

 one would lunch off a ray of sunshine 1 



Is it a dream, or the anticipation of a re- 

 mote reality? The problem is one of the 

 most important that science can set us. Let 

 us first hear the evidence of the young Lycosae 

 regarding its possibilities. 



For seven months, without any material 

 1 68 



