that, when beaten thin enough for a breath to raise it in the air, it could not be torn except by sudden and great mechanical force. Another workman near him was testing the effect of electricity on the various grades of the new amalgam and recording the results minutely. In each of the crystal chambers there were at hand supplies of all the forms of energy that might be needed, such as heat, cold, pressure, electricity. Each workman was isolated in order that the elements he used might not interfere with the experiments of his neighbour; but his workshop was transparent, that he might beckon for help at any moment, or exhibit to his fellows the result of any experiment without modifying the conditions or breaking the continuity. A third branch of these families dealt with the adaptation of the new amalgams to the various structural necessities of the community; they found out which form or grade would resist the disintegrating influence or the power of water or of electric force; they tested what shape would best suit each grade, solid or hollow, cylindrical or spheral, cubic or rectangular, thin or thick, curved or rectilinear. Another branch devoted itself to the means of making the various metals or amalgams cohere either temporarily or permanently. A fifth studied the adaptation of the new discoveries to tools and machines and to the invention of new mechanical forms that would bring out their greatest utilities. To go through all the departments of this vast architectural workshop would need a week’s rehearsal. To my first view it seemed bewildering in its complexity of specialisation; but after closer acquaintance it became simplicity itself, in fact the only plan that nature itself could have pointed out. CHAPTER XIII THE LILARAN HAVING finished our survey of Oolorefa, my mind returned to the observatory for Lilaroma, which I had seen growing in miniature under the modeller’s hand and music. It seemed to me a strange romance that citizens of this beautiful island lived amid everlasting snow and ice tens of thousands of feet above their fellows. How could those who were accustomed to the conditions and privileges I saw around me bring themselves to surrender it all and live the lives of hermits amid antarctic rigours? Thyriel reminded me of the glacial cold of the southern land from which their ancestry had come; but this did not wholly satisfy me. The long centuries of life in a new zone had changed their powers and tastes, and it must be a great sacrifice to live in a climate so different as was the glacier region of a mountain. My curiosity was roused, and I resolved to observe and know for myself at the earliest opportunity. I could see the observatory now perched on the gleaming shoulder of the mountain above the circle of the storm-cone, and every day I turned my eyes upwards I grew more eager to inquire into the conditions of life in so different a temperature.