auditory organs; some whose work lies in delicate chemical operations project a vast olfactory organ; others again have flat feet for treadles with anchylosed joints; and others—­who I have been told are glassblowers—­seem mere lung-bellows.  But every one of these common Selenites I have seen at work is exquisitely adapted to the social need it meets.  Fine work is done by fined-down workers, amazingly dwarfed and neat.  Some I could hold on the palm of my hand.  There is even a sort of turnspit Selenite, very common, whose duty and only delight it is to apply the motive power for various small appliances.  And to rule over these things and order any erring tendency there might be in some aberrant natures are the most muscular beings I have seen in the moon, a sort of lunar police, who must have been trained from their earliest years to give a perfect respect and obedience to the swollen heads.

“The making of these various sorts of operative must be a very curious and interesting process.  I am very much in the dark about it, but quite recently I came upon a number of young Selenites confined in jars from which only the fore-limbs protruded, who were being compressed to become machine-minders of a special sort.  The extended ‘hand’ in this highly developed system of technical education is stimulated by irritants and nourished by injection, while the rest of the body is starved.  Phi-oo, unless I misunderstood him, explained that in the earlier stages these queer little creatures are apt to display signs of suffering in their various cramped situations, but they easily become indurated to their lot; and he took me on to where a number of flexible-minded messengers were being drawn out and broken in.  It is quite unreasonable, I know, but such glimpses of the educational methods of these beings affect me disagreeably.  I hope, however, that may pass off, and I may be able to see more of this aspect of their wonderful social order.  That wretched-looking hand-tentacle sticking out of its jar seemed to have a sort of limp appeal for lost possibilities; it haunts me still, although, of course it is really in the end a far more humane proceeding than our earthly method of leaving children to grow into human beings, and then making machines of them.

“Quite recently, too—­I think it was on the eleventh or twelfth visit I made to this apparatus—­I had a curious light upon the lives of these operatives.  I was being guided through a short cut hither, instead of going down the spiral, and by the quays to the Central Sea.  From the devious windings of a long, dark gallery, we emerged into a vast, low cavern, pervaded by an earthy smell, and as things go in this darkness, rather brightly lit.  The light came from a tumultuous growth of livid fungoid shapes—­some indeed singularly like our terrestrial mushrooms, but standing as high or higher than a man.

“‘Mooneys eat these?’ said I to Phi-oo.

“‘Yes, food.’