. The egg supplied the materials necessary
for their tiny frames; and, as the loss of waste substance is, for the
moment, excessively small, or even _nil_, additional plastic food is not
needed so long as the beastie does not grow. In this respect, the
prolonged abstinence presents no difficulty. But there remains the
question of energy-producing food, which is indispensable, for the little
Lycosa moves, when necessary, and very actively at that. To what shall
we attribute the heat expended upon action, when the animal takes
absolutely no nourishment?

An idea suggests itself. We say to ourselves that, without being life, a
machine is something more than matter, for man has added a little of his
mind to it. Now the iron beast, consuming its ration of coal, is really
browsing the ancient foliage of arborescent ferns in which solar energy
has accumulated.

Beasts of flesh and blood act no otherwise. Whether they mutually devour
one another or levy tribute on the plant, they invariably quicken
themselves with the stimulant of the sun's heat, a heat stored in grass,
fruit, seed and those which feed on such. The sun, the soul of the
universe, is the supreme dispenser of energy.

Instead of being served up through the intermediary of food and passing
through the ignominious circuit of gastric chemistry, could not this
solar energy penetrate the animal 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!

Is it a dream, or the anticipation of a remote reality? The problem is
one of the most important that science can set us. Let us first hear the
evidence of the young Lycosae