The five kinds of establishment have been founded, from the fold to the horn; they have only to grow larger as their population increases. Now what are they doing, these Lice immured in solitary confinement, each after her own fashion? To begin with, they are changing their clothes and their shape. They used to be black and slender, suitably built for wandering over the budding leaves: now they adopt sedentary habits, turn yellow and put on flesh. And now, with the sucker implanted on the wall, which is swollen with turpentine, they quietly give birth to their young. For them this is a continuous function, like that of digestion. They have nothing else to do. Shall we call them fathers? No: the word would clash with the expression “giving birth.” Shall we speak of them as mothers? Not that either. The exact meaning of the word prevents us. They are neither one nor the other, nor are they an intermediate form. Our language has no term to describe these animal curiosities. We must resort to the plants to acquire an approximate notion of the whole procedure. In our parts, the common garlic scarcely ever flowers: cultivation has caused it to lose its sexual duality. It knows nothing of true seed, to which the paternity of the stamen and the maternity of the pistil contribute. Yet the plant multiplies readily enough. The underground part begets its offspring directly, that is to say, it produces large fleshy buds, gathered into a cluster of what is known as cloves. Each is a living embryo plant, which, when buried in the soil, continues its development and grows like the original plant. To multiply the garlic in his kitchen-garden, the gardener has no other resource than that of the cloves, the usual seed being here non-existent. Some plants of the same alliaceous group are even more remarkable. They send up a normal stem, ending in what appears to be a spherical head of blossom. Properly this head should blossom into an umbel of flowers. But this is not what happens. There are no flowers whatever; they are replaced by bulbils, a diminutive form of clove. Sexuality has disappeared: instead of seeds, announced by the preparations for flowering, the plant produces plantlets, concentrated into fleshy buds. On the other hand, the underground part has a lavish supply of cloves. Though the garlic is sexless, its future is assured; it will have no lack of successors. To a certain extent, the genesis of the Plant-louse will bear comparison with that of the garlic. The strange insect also puts forth bulbils: that is to say, it is spared all ovarian delay and procreates live offspring without assistance.