“I think we’d better not,” counseled the professor. “In the first place we don’t need them. They would be no good for food. Then we don’t know but what they might attack us, and it would be no joke to be bitten by a grasshopper of that size. Let them alone. We may find other game which will need your attention, Andy. Better save your ammunition.” Somewhat against his will, Andy had to submit to the professor’s ruling. The old hunter consoled himself with the reflection that if insects grew to that size he would have some excellent sport hunting even the birds of the inner world. “I wonder what sort of a tree that peach grew on,” Jack remarked, as he cut off another slice, when the excitement caused by the discovery of the grasshoppers had subsided. “It must be taller than a church steeple. I wonder how the fruit got here, for there are no trees around.” “I fancy those insects rolled it along for a good distance,” Mr. Henderson put in. “You can see the marks on the ground, where they pushed it. They are wonderful creatures.” “Are we going any farther?” asked Mark. “Perhaps we can find the peach tree, and, likely there are other fruit trees near it.” At the professor’s suggestion they strolled along for some distance. They were now about three miles from the airship, and found that what they had supposed was a rather level plain, was becoming a succession of hills and hollows. It was while descending into a rather deep valley that Jack pointed ahead and exclaimed: “I guess there’s our peach orchard, but I never saw one like it before.” Nor had any of the others. Instead of trees the peaches were attached to vines growing along the ground. They covered a large part of the valley, and the peaches, some bigger than the one they first discovered, some small and green, rose up amid the vines, just as pumpkins do in a corn field. “Stranger and stranger,” the professor murmured. “Peaches grow on vines. I suppose potatoes will grow on trees. Everything seems to be reversed here.” They made their way down toward the peach “orchard” as Jack called it, though “patch” would have been a better name. Besides peaches they found plums, apples, and pears growing in the same way, and all of a size proportionate to the first-named fruit. “Well, one thing is evident,” Mr. Henderson remarked, “we shall not starve here. There is plenty to eat, even, if we have to turn vegetarians.” “I wonder what time it is getting to be,” Jack remarked. “My watch says twelve o’clock but whether it’s noon or midnight I can’t tell, with this colored light coming and going. I wonder if it ever sets as the sun does.” “That is something we’ll have to get used to,” the professor said. “But I think we had better go back to the ship now. We have many things to do to get it in order again. Besides, I am a little afraid to leave it unguarded so long. No telling but what some strange beast—or persons, for that matter—might injure it.”