Yet there was much to master in the new cosmic conditions that from time to time beset the earth or the planetary system. Some seemed to arise so suddenly that no observation could have anticipated them. Especially was this the case with living drift, into shoals of which the universe struck, the spawn of undeveloped worlds. Hence came new diseases so widespread as to be plagues. These generally evaded the fine instruments of the astro-scientist, till they had reached the very atmosphere of the earth; for in the interstellar spaces they led so meagre a life and were spread so thinly and widely that they scarcely intercepted the light or other forms of energy from the sun or other systems. Yet the imaginative families and the inventors were struggling towards some more delicate instrument, which would observe and record the presence of interstellar material life. CHAPTER XIV CHOKTROO THE Lilamo were usually occupied in these sanitary duties, but at times the other section of their defence of Limanora claimed their attention. I had had good reason to know the force of the lilaran, or storm-cone, in my attempt to arrive in the island. Had it not been decided to permit our entrance, our perseverance would have failed of the attainment of our object. I was soon to witness a marvellous display of the defensive and repulsive powers of the storm-cone. For some years after the first period of my novitiate and my partial admission to privileges as a citizen with which this period ended, there had been observed throughout the archipelago a movement which spread with considerable rapidity. It was one of the amusements of the Limanorans to watch the comedy of life upon the other islands through the idrovamolan, or instrument for distance seeing and hearing, which they had fixed high up the mountain. On a floating strip of irelium, that could be projected far into the sky, scenes beneath the horizon could be mirrored and watched through this instrument and through other instruments for reducing distance. The sounds, too, that rose from the scene re-echoed from the under-surface of the floating mirror, and could be magnified by the makrakoustic part of the idrovamolan into their original volume. A rarer and more difficult instrument was one which combined with this power of seeing and hearing at a great distance that of noting the magnetism working in a community even under the horizon.