And the Lilamo were, almost as much as the physicians, imbued with reverence for human life and with the sense of the importance of preserving it and giving it the longest opportunity in the individual to gain its highest possibility. They had to protect their race from all external foes. They had therefore to study climatic changes and watch the sanitary conditions of the island. Sanitation meant primarily the expulsion of all hostile clirolanic life and the prevention of all conditions that would attract it or form its breeding-ground. They were especially interested in the magnetic and electric peculiarities of Limanora and of the section of the globe in which they lived; for these affected not only the health and spirits of the people, but the amount of minute life that harboured in the earth or floated in the atmosphere. They could by an increase of these elements rid an unwholesome district of its unhealthy conditions; and yet the inhabitants of it could not remain whilst the process of purification was going on. Too much magnetism or electricity in the earth or air would endanger the nervous balance of the human frame. The test instruments in the lava wells were frequently examined to find the electric state of any section of the island; and one central electrometer was constantly recording the electric state of the atmosphere in all parts of it. Thus were they able to recharge by means of their apparatus whatever localities were found defective, and tap those that had a superfluity; and over the country at night the flame-like streamers lit up the darkness here and there. But this occurred at rare intervals, for it was only in certain conditions of the sun that the earth sponged up more electricity than was good for the highest life upon its surface.