The Locusts: their Function 



Pricked relentlessly by the needs of the 

 stomach, the world knows no more impera- 

 tive duty than the acquisition of food. To 

 secure a seat in the refectory, each animal 

 expends its sum total of activity, industry, 

 toil, trickery and strife ; and the general ban- 

 quet, which should be a joy, is to many a 

 torment. Man is far from escaping the 

 miseries of the struggle for food. On the 

 contrary, only too often he tastes them in all 

 their bitterness. 



Ingenious. as he is, will he succeed in free- 

 ing himself from them? Science says yes. 

 Chemistry promises, in the near future, a 

 solution of the problem of subsistence. The 

 sister science, physics, is preparing the way. 

 Already it is contemplating how to get more 

 and better work done by the sun, that great 

 sluggard who thinks that he has done his 

 duty by us when he sweetens our grapes and 

 ripens our corn. It will bottle his heat, 

 garner his rays, in order to control them and 

 employ them where we think fit. 



With these supplies of energy, the hearths 

 will blaze, the wheels will turn, the pestles 

 pound, the graters grate, the rollers grind; 

 and the work of agriculture, so wasteful at 

 present, thwarted as it is by the inclemency 

 367 



