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 no better in describing the food production and assimilation in a pure fire-world like this one on which I had arrived.

To imagine and believe that fertility can be possible in a seething world-furnace, is too far beyond our philosophy to be conceivable. Alpha Centaurus is so large a sun that although it has a population ten times greater than our globe, yet its surface is sparsely settled.

The oceans of fire occupy the greater part of the surface of this wonderful sphere. In these great red-hot seas live the monsters of the deep, as well as a motley variety of other species, veritable salamanders, some grotesquely hideous, others surpassingly beautiful in form and hue.

On this sphere man is extraordinarily intelligent. He is almost totally ignorant of anything akin to astronomy, although some of the greater scholars have ventured the theory that there might be other worlds containing human life, providing there be fire enough to sustain them.

In some other particulars, these star-creatures have made astonishing progress.