He [Samuel Keimer] was usually a great glutton, and I promised myself some diversion in half starving him. He agreed to try the practice, if I would keep him company. I did so, and we held it for three months. We had our victuals dress'd, and brought to us regularly by a woman in the neighborhood, who had from me a list of forty dishes, to be prepar'd for us at different times, in all which there was neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, and the whim suited me the better at this time from the cheapness of it, not costing us above eighteen pence sterling each per week.

Then personal appearance sympathised with mental deterioration: he acquired a slouching gait and ignoble look; his naturally reserved disposition was exaggerated into an almost idiotic excess of unsociable moroseness […]

The slightest hint of smugness would have had the nation leaning over our shoulders to blow out the birthday candles with a gale of reproach and disapproval.

The second line of inquiry has to do with the ultimate fate of unisexual species. Are they doomed to more rapid extinction than bisexual species? On the assumption that unisexual populations lack genetic variation, most theoretical studies […]