spite of law and regulation, in spite of all that obstinate conservatism

that lies at the base of the formal order of mankind, the Food of the

Gods, once it had been set going, pursued its subtle and invincible

progress.

The children of the Food grew steadily through all these years; that was

the cardinal fact of the time. But it is the leakages make history. The

children who had eaten grew, and soon there were other children growing;

and all the best intentions in the world could not stop further leakages

and still further leakages. The Food insisted on escaping with the

pertinacity of a thing alive. Flour treated with the stuff crumbled in

dry weather almost as if by intention into an impalpable powder, and

would lift and travel before the lightest breeze. Now it would be some

fresh insect won its way to a temporary fatal new development, now some

fresh outbreak from the sewers of rats and such-like vermin. For some

days the village of Pangbourne in Berkshire fought with giant ants.

Three men were bitten and died. There would be a panic, there would be a

struggle, and the salient evil would be fought down again, leaving

always something behind, in the obscurer things of life--changed for

ever. Then again another acute and startling outbreak, a swift upgrowth

of monstrous weedy thickets, a drifting dissemination about the world of

inhumanly growing thistles, of cockroaches men fought with shot guns, or

a plague of mighty flies.

There were some strange and desperate struggles in obscure places. The

Food begot heroes in the cause of littleness ...

178

The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth