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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: derives, just as science still remains ignorant of the metamorphoses
of the cochineal. The ergot, or spur, of rye is apparently a
population of insects where the genius of science has been able, so
far, to discover only one slight movement. Thus, while awaiting the
harvest and gleaning, fifty old women imitated the borer at the feet
of five or six hundred trees which were fated to become skeletons and
to put forth no more leaves in the spring. They were carefully chosen
in the least accessible places, so that the surrounding branches
concealed them.
Who conveyed the secret information by which this was done? No one.
Courtecuisse happened to complain in Tonsard's tavern of having found
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