Page:Life in a thousand worlds.djvu/231

. However, in ordinary circumstances, the stimulating acid is used in very light quantities. The people have learned by experience that vegetables have a better flavor when they have been brought to maturity by the slower processes.

These wonderful fertilizers are a blessed boon in the time of "crop failures," for then the same crop can be grown anew from the seed and hurried to maturity before the close of the season.

The curse of the vegetable worms has been reduced to a minimum on this world of Ploid. The chemists have labored patiently for one thousand years to produce a substance that will not destroy vegetable seed and at the same time kill all forms of parasites. The results have been gratifying, and with considerable pleasure I viewed a garden of the various odd-shaped vegetables that are grown, without being repulsed at the sight of such crawling specimens as tomato and cabbage worms.

The happiest result of this worm-killing substance is seen in the work it accomplishes on fruit and nut trees. There is