was complete, the score of the music and the miniature fabric were sent to the central dome; and in less than an hour the huge mansion was on its winged raft speeding towards its destination far up the great mountain-slope. I was led through the whole series of experimenting chapels; in each was there a miniature sonarchitect producing test forms for special purposes under the skilled hands of creative workmen and their pupils. In most of them new designs were being produced for private houses; for of these was needed the greatest variety, as each islander had his home renewed so frequently. I could not have conceived that so many different forms could be created for the same purpose; indeed the number seemed to be limited only by the possible combination of notes of music and the need of adapting each design to habitation and the habits of the dwellers. The skill of the artist lay in the selection of the proper forms out of the multitude he daily evolved, and in their adaptation to the necessities of Limanoran life. It was in these designs that the younger members of the architect families were engaged; thus they learned their art and developed their creative instincts. Under some cupolas which we visited we found experiments on new designs for the large public buildings, and to these the wisest members of the families were applying their century-tried skill. As we approached any such chapel, we could hear the most elaborate and entrancing music, for the design in such cases was labyrinthine, and needed the noblest artistic faculties to select and develop it. The executive musical talent displayed and the talent of extemporaneous composition and modification would have been called genius in European communities; but this people had no word corresponding to the quicksand of meaning this word covers in Christendom. They knew the origin and growth of each faculty, even when exceptionally developed, too well to attribute it to an indefinable something which nature had somehow conferred upon a chance-chosen individual. They knew as exactly the causes that produced given effects in the human system as they could calculate the forces of the inanimate world, and had no belief in the power of nature to give to human work by some caprice more value than it deserved and that deranged all calculation. This criticism I brought down on me from my guide when I expressed amazement at the beauty of the music and the resulting design in one chapel, and attempted to translate the word “genius” into Limanoran. Such expressions, he persuaded me, are but the half-articulate escape-valves of wide-mouthed ignorance; they mean no more than a confession of blindness and incapacity, and should be rapidly rejected by every progressive civilisation. The musical and designing power of this particular Limanoran belonged to most in his family of his own age, and was merely the stage the art of sonarchitecture had reached in its development on the island. Wherever