to have everything condensed and excluded from air, and to know that what I am swallowing is good and wholesome, anyway.” “That’s all very well,” replied Ross, flinging fir-needles into the stream, “but it’s very much overdone. Compression is all very well, too, but when you come to certain foods and salts which, to begin with, are indigestible and often quite insoluble in the stomach, and you compress them to so small a compass that they are as hard as steel, where are you? One swallows a good dinner, as one thinks, yet most of it has gone; no stomach, not even that of an ostrich, could digest it. One tries to realise what a delicious dinner it was, yet no stretch of imagination can overlook the fact that one gets desperately hungry quicker than one should. Now, notwithstanding all the science displayed on my recent meal, I am sure I could eat, enjoy, _and_ digest, a thick, juicy steak from that salmon there which is just turning a somersault. Oh yes, hold up your hand in disgust! I’m not going to fly in the face of custom, because I’m quite aware that the salmon’s great and much revered ancestor might at some time have swallowed a fly or a worm that had on it a parasite or some injurious microbe, and therefore, because of this awful occurrence to its great grandparent thrice removed, it cannot be eaten without being first dried, sterilised, compressed, and enclosed in a little antiseptic capsule in which it is guaranteed to remain, if need be, fresh and pure till the crack of doom, when it may joyfully rise and meet its family as a pure and wholesome fish. I am tired of it all! and as I said before I think science, hygiene, and all the other aids to existence are so much overdone that there will soon be a reaction, or my name’s not Ross Ainley,” and disgusted Ross rolled back again and lay looking up at his ship, a beautiful aluminium vessel, dipping and curtseying to the rippling breeze as if she were breasting an incoming tide. Gilbert laughed and exclaimed, “You’re like old Alexander of ancient fame—paying the penalty of an inordinate desire for conquest. You are on the top rung of the ladder and because there is no higher rung to step upon you are disgusted with everything. But who’s that coming?” he suddenly broke off to exclaim, at the same time pointing to a sparkle on the horizon caused by the sun’s glinting on an approaching airship. Instantly the blues and banter vanished, and they watched with interest the new-comer fly over their heads at great speed, then seeing their vessels below, immediately pull up, and a man looked over the side and shouted, “Hallo! Ainley; how are you?” “Splendid, Oakland. Come down and have a chat; I’ve not seen you for many a month!” answered Ross.