484 



THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Vol. XLVII 



animals. Examining the data of the third and fourth 

 groups where in the course of 84 days the control speci- 

 mens were fed 72 times and the starved ones only 36 times 

 we encounter practically the same result. 



TABLE C 



The fact that in the case of these last two groups the 

 starved individuals have not reached the same weight as 

 the corresponding controls, whereas in the former two 

 groups they even became by one-sixth heavier than the 

 controls, must be attributed to the shorter duration of 

 the feeding-up of these animals. We find thus that a 

 fasting experience enables the organism to attain almost 

 the same weight (or even a greater weight) which animals 

 that did not have such an experience attain, upon half the 

 quantity of their food supply, because the rate of growth 

 after starvation is considerably greater. 



We may proceed now in a similar fashion to compare 

 the effect of continual and of intermittent feeding upon 

 the growth of the body. These data are recorded in 

 Table D, and are likewise calculated for an initial weight 

 of one gram. The ratio between the number of feedings 

 of these two kinds of animals being 1-^0.5, the respective 

 body-weights have not become 0.5 of that of the control 

 specimens, but 0.57-0.81; in other words, the intermit- 

 tently fed animals have increased somewhat more than 



