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172 much of his products. The dominion of the sea confers on the nation that holds it a supremacy and power that other nations have not. The sea is a great civiliser, for the ports of many of the wilder regions of the earth are far more civilised than the interior regions; and the last strongholds of barbarism and savagery will probably be the inland parts of Africa. From the sea man gathers much of his food. One of the greater problems of his future on Earth, perhaps, is the utilisation of the ocean to his purpose. On Earth there are, as it were, two worlds of life—the terrestrial and marine; and of these the marine is the larger, though the less important. Each world has its animal and vegetable kingdom, with their orders, families, general species, as distinct as though they belonged to different planets."

"Then it seems," said Ezariel, "that Earth must be a sort of mean between this world and the solid Moon. In Mars we have seen a world where land is quite dominant, though sea exists. May there not be a law in this? The larger worlds more fluid, the smallest solid, the medium ones mixed?"

Our conversation had an abrupt termination. One of the huge Jovians at length perceived our ether-car, and, rapidly swimming to it.