preference, due to the greater juiciness of the flesh? I am not in a
position to say. At all events, the Bembex is not so infatuated with Fly
as to refuse to abandon it for other game.

The failure which I foresaw has proved a magnificent success. It is
fairly convincing, is it not? Without the evidence of experiment, what
can we rely upon? Beneath the ruins of so many theories which appeared
to be most solidly erected I should hesitate to admit that two and two
make four if the facts were not before me. My argument had the most
tempting probability on its side, but it had not the truth. As it is
always possible to find reasons after the event in support of an opinion
which one would not at first admit, I should now argue as follows:

The plant is the great factory in which are elaborated, with mineral
materials, the organic principles which are the materials of life.
Certain products are common to the whole vegetable series, but others,
far less numerous, are prepared in special laboratories. Each genus,
each species has its trade-mark. Here essential oils are manufactured;
here alkaloids; here starches, fatty substances, resins, sugars, acids.
Hence result special energies, which do not suit every herbivorous
animal. It assuredly requires a stomach made expressly for the purpose
to digest aconite, colchicum, hemlock or henbane; those who have not
such a stomach could never endure a diet of that sort. Besides, the
Mithridates fed on poison resist only a single toxin. (Mithridates VI.
King of Pontus (d. B.C. 63) is said to have secured immunity from poison
by taking increased doses of it.--Translator's Note.) The caterpillar of
the Death's-head Hawk-moth, which delights in the solanin of the potato,
would be killed by the acrid principle of the tithymals that form the
food of the Spurge-caterpillar. The herbivorous larvae are therefore
perforce exclusive in their tastes, because different genera of
vegetables possess very different properties.

With this variety in the products of the plant, the animal, a consumer
far more than a producer, contrasts the uniformity in its own products.
The albumen in the egg of the Ostrich or the Chaffinch, the casein in
the milk of the Cow or the Ass, the muscular flesh of the Wolf or the
Sheep, the Screech-owl or the Field-mouse, the Frog or the Earth-worm:
these remain albumen, casein or fibrin, edible if not eaten. Here are
no excruciating condiments, no special acridities, no alkal