Let me quote some exact figures. Each of them measures nineteen millimetres [74] from the edge of the clypeus to the tip of the abdomen. The smallest specimen in my boxes, as the freedom of the fields made him, measures twenty-six. [75] The products of my experiments, fed upon half rations, are therefore only half the bulk of the normal Beetle chosen from among the smallest. This is also approximately the ratio between the full and the reduced diet. The extensible mould of the organism has reproduced the proportion of the substance at its disposal. My intervention has just created dwarfs; treatment by starvation has given me abortions. I am not excessively proud of it, though I am glad to have learned by experiment that dwarfishness, at all events in the insects, is not a matter of predisposition and heredity but a mere accident caused by deficient nourishment. What then had happened to the little Minotaur who suggested these experiments in starvation? Assuredly a deficiency of food. Though expert in the art of rationing, the mother was unable to complete the sausage over the egg, perhaps because the materials were lacking, or because some inopportune incident interrupted her work; and the grub, scantily fed, though strong enough to withstand a not too rigorous diet, was unable to acquire the wherewithal to provide the adult with the amount of substance needed for the normal size. This seems to be the whole secret of the tiny Minotaur. He was a child of poverty. While privation reduces the size, it does not follow that unlimited abundance is able to increase it very notably. In vain do I provide the grubs of the Sacred Beetle with an extra allowance of food that doubles or trebles the ration supplied by the mother. My boarders do not attain a growth worth mentioning. As they leave the maternal pears, so do they leave the plentiful messes which my spatula has mixed for them. And this must be so: the appetite has its limits, which, once reached, leave the consumer indifferent to the luxuries of the table. It is not in our power to make giants by means of an excess of food. When the grub has gorged to the required degree, it ceases to eat. There are nevertheless giants among the Sacred Beetles. I have some that came from Ajaccio and Algeria and measure thirty-four millimetres [76] in length. By comparing this figure with those already given, we see that, if the size of the dwarfs obtained by fasting is represented by the figure 1, that of the Sacred Beetle of the Sérignan district is expressed by 2 and that of the Corsican and African Beetles by 5.