Invaluable—Antipathy to human beings—Hippopotamus' hide—Impervious to water—Resistance to destroying forces—All parts of the animal utilised—Parts subservient to the beautiful—Hippopotamus' land—Numerous herds—Their keepers—How attired—The herb antipathetic to hippopotami—How discovered—Experiment with the young beast—Antipathetic solution keeps animals away from cities—They love fresh-water rivers—The Aoe waters prejudicial to man—Mode of rearing Hippopotami—Precautions adopted—Why they have not been able to rear animal in Western Europe—Recommendations—Habits of the animal—The hippopotami—dance—How the young one is separated from the mother—How a hippopotamus is removed from the herd—The food of the hippopotamus in general

XLVI.—WILD ANIMALS.

The Serpent—The Boa—Professors to examine medicinal and other properties—Modes of capturing wild beasts—Huntsmen—The iron-work net—The watch-hut—The bait—Dead animals not allowed in the city—Habits of the tiger—THE TIGER AND THE CHILD—THE UNICORN

XLVII.—THE SUN.

The palace—Communication with auxiliary tower—Observatory—STAR INSTRUMENT constructed—Secrets revealed—Inhabitants and atmospheres of the stars differ—Invisible beings—The SUN-OCEAN, Mountains, and Continents—Winds—Attracted by the heat—Brilliancy increased by reflection—Every planet has electricity sympathetic or antipathetic—Different appearance in Montalluyah—Fixed stars—Comets—Overflowings of the waters—Waters in space—Conclusion

INTRODUCTION.

By introducing the reader to "Another World," the Editor does not lead him into a region to which the Earth has no affinity. The Planet to which the following fragments refer not only belongs to the same solar system as our own, but also presents like physical aspects. In it, as here, are to be found land and water—mountains, rivers, seas, lakes, hills, valleys, ravines, cataracts alternating with each other; though in consequence of more potent electrical agencies the contrasts between these various objects are frequently abrupt and decided to a degree to which we can here offer no comparison. The other world about to be described is, in fact, essentially another Earth—widely differing, indeed, from ours in its details, but still subjected to the same natural laws. Its inhabitants, like devout persons here, look forward with reverent feeling towards the abode of the blest. To a purely spiritual or angelic region these fragments do not relate.

The name of "Montalluyah," which more immediately belongs to the chief city in the planet, is not incorrectly extended so as to include the entire sphere. This new world is not made up of separate countries and mutually independent states like those of the Earth, but, forming one kingdom, is governed by one supreme Ruler, assisted by twelve kings inferior to him in rank and power.

The speaker in the fragments (which may almost be said to take the form of an autobiography) was the son of one of the twelve kings, who by his genius and worth became "Tootmanyoso," or supreme Ruler. In the planet his name is mentioned with even more reverence than, by different peoples, is paid to that of Zoroaster, Solon, Lycurgus, or Alfred; but he has this peculiarity that he does not fade, like many other great legislators, into mythical indistinctness, but is himself the exponent of his own polity.

It must not, however, be supposed that this great legislator was the first to rescue his world from mere barbarism. The founder of civilization in Montalluyah seems to have been a very ancient sage named Elikoia, to whom brief reference is made in the following pages. Prior to the reign of our Tootmanyoso the people had passed through various stages of civilization, under the guidance of many wise and good men. Still the polity was defective, for the country remained subject to crime, misery, and disease.

The proverb that "Prevention is better than cure," to which everybody gives unhesitating assent, but which is often forgotten in practice, lies at the root of most of the reforms, both moral and physical, effected by the Tootmanyoso. The policy of prevention—that is, of destroying maladies of mind and body in the germ, before they had been allowed to spread their poison—was one of his leading principles. Under his influence, the physicians of Montalluyah made it less their duty to cure than to prevent disease, therein differing widely from our practitioners, who are not usually called to exercise their skill until a malady has been developed, and has perhaps assumed large proportions.

Under his influence likewise it was thought better to diminish moral evil by extirpating faults in the child, rather than by punishing crimes in the man.

Another prominent feature in the polity of the great Legislator of Montalluyah is the occupation of every person in the intellectual or physical pursuit for which he has been fitted by natural qualifications, developed and fortified by culture. Nobility, position, and wealth are made to depend on merit alone, ascertained by a mechanism which neither favouritism, ignorance, nor accident can affect. These laws may for an instant seem to partake of a democratic tinge; but it will be clearly perceived that the regulations concerning the institutions of property and marriage are diametrically opposite to those which have rendered the theories of Communists so generally hateful.

Many of the Tootmanyoso's reforms resulted from an application of extraordinary scientific discoveries to the purposes of life. Under the law which determined that the "right man" should, in the most extensive sense of the phrase, always be in the "right place," discoveries were made of which the most acute investigators of earlier times had had no conception, and the newly-acquired ability of wielding electrical, mechanical, and other forces had momentous political consequences. Armed with powers previously unknown, the Tootmanyoso found comparatively easy the successive steps towards the happiness and well-being of his world, where a series of insuperable obstacles would have been presented to the wisest of his predecessors.

Of the physical agencies mentioned in the following pages, that of electricity will be found especially prominent. Both the knowledge and the manipulation of electricity have assumed in Montalluyah proportions far beyond those known to us. The electric fluid is there employed for the most various purposes: for locomotion, for lightening heavy bodies, for increasing the power of optical instruments, for the detection and eradication of the germs of disease, for increasing the efficiency of musical instruments—in a word, for the advancement of the world in all that belongs to morality, science, and art.

To some readers the plural form, "Electricities," which frequently appears in the following pages, might seem a strange innovation. The Editor therefore states, by way of anticipation, that in certain important points the electrical science of Montalluyah differs from, if it is not opposed to, some of the principles accepted here. In Montalluyah it is an ascertained fact that everything organic or inorganic possesses an electricity of its own, each kind differing from the others in one or more important properties. Glimmerings of the progress effected in electricity and other sciences, including the knowledge and application of Sun-power, may be deduced from the facts