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 foodstuffs. 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 could 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 regarding its possibilities.

For seven months, without any material nourishment, they expend
strength in moving. To wind up the mechanism of their muscles, they
recruit themselves direct with heat and light. During the time when she
was dragging the bag of eggs behind her, the mother, at the best
moments of the day, came and held up her pill to the sun. With her two
hind-legs she lifted it out of the ground into the full light; slowly
she turned it and turned it, so that every side might receive its share
of the vivifying rays. Well, this bath of life, which awakened the
germs, is now prolonged to keep the tender babes active.

Daily, if the sky be clear, the Lycosa, carrying her young, comes up
from the burrow, leans on the kerb and spends long hours basking in the
sun. Here, on their mother's back, the youngsters stretch their limbs
delightedly, saturate themselves with heat, take in reserves of
motor-power, absorb energy.

They are motionless; but, if I only blow upon them, they stampede as
nimbly as though a hurricane were passing. Hurriedly, they disperse;
hurriedly, they reassemble: a proof that, without material nourishment,
the little animal machine is always at full pressure, ready to work.
When the shade comes, mother and sons go down again, surfeited with
solar emanations. The feast of energy at the Sun Tavern is finished for
the day.