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Rh on into the huge forest of colossal fungi and lichens.

This was not the only denizen of the forest. Strange forms still appeared, such as men never think of save in nightmares: some gigantic, some of more moderate dimensions, but none apparently of any nobleness of aspect; nothing like what we had seen in other worlds, and all seemed of inferior types, or rather developments in great size of the inferior types of life. We remained in our car, watching these strange beings pass and re-pass.

"This seems," I said, "like some of the dreams of Dante's 'Inferno.' These horrid, inchoate forms are what men dreamt of in the Middle Ages as the eternal companions of the spirits of the wicked. Is this a region given up to sin,—a world more fallen than Earth even,—a realm in rebellion against God?"

"Not necessarily so," said Ezariel; "it may be only a region undeveloped as yet, where Nature is imperfect,—where as yet she cannot produce her masterpieces. It may be that the higher forms of being may even thus be developed in these strange types."

"It would seem," I said, "as if there was some little ground in the notion of the old astrologers of Earth, that this vast planet is