MAURY: All right. What's the fundamental principle of biology?
DICK: You don't know yourself.
MAURY: Don't hedge!
DICK: Well, natural selection?
MAURY: Wrong.
DICK: I give it up.
MAURY: Ontogony recapitulates phyllogony.
FIFTH YOUNG MAN: Take your base!
MAURY: Ask you another. What's the influence of mice on the clover crop? (Laughter.)
FOURTH YOUNG MAN: What's the influence of rats on the Decalogue?
MAURY: Shut up, you saphead. There is a connection.
DICK: What is it then?
MAURY: (Pausing a moment in growing disconcertion) Why, let's see. I seem to have forgotten exactly. Something about the bees eating the clover.
FOURTH YOUNG MAN: And the clover eating the mice! Haw! Haw!
MAURY: (Frowning) Let me just think a minute.
DICK: (Sitting up suddenly) Listen!
(A volley of chatt
