and how it could.  The forms of life grew stranger.  Pure plants and pure animals disappeared by degrees, and their place was filled by singular creatures that seemed to partake of both characters.  They had limbs, faces, will, and intelligence, but they remained for the greater part of their time rooted in the ground by preference, and they fed only on soil and air.  Maskull saw no sexual organs and failed to understand how the young came into existence.

Then he witnessed an astonishing sight.  A large and fully developed plant-animal appeared suddenly in front of him, out of empty space.  He could not believe his eyes, but stared at the creature for a long time in amazement.  It went on calmly moving and burrowing before him, as thought it had been there all its life.  Giving up the puzzle, Maskull resumed his striding from rock to rock up the gorge, and then, quietly and without warning, the same phenomenon occurred again.  No longer could he doubt than he was seeing miracles—­that Nature was precipitating its shapes into the world without making use of the medium of parentage....  No solution of the problem presented itself.

The brook too had altered in character.  A trembling radiance came up from its green water, like some imprisoned force escaping into the air.  He had not walked in it for some time; now he did so, to test its quality.  He felt new life entering his body, from his feet upward; it resembled a slowly moving cordial, rather than mere heat.  The sensation was quite new in his experience, yet he knew by instinct what it was.  The energy emitted by the brook was ascending his body neither as friend nor foe but simply because it happened to be the direct road to its objective elsewhere.  But, although it had no hostile intentions, it was likely to prove a rough traveller—­he was clearly conscious that its passage through his body threatened to bring about some physical transformation, unless he could do something to prevent it.  Leaping quickly out of the water, he leaned against a rock, tightened his muscles, and braced himself against the impending charge.  At that very moment the blurring again attacked his sight, and, while he was guarding against that, his forehead sprouted out into a galaxy of new eyes.  He put his hand up and counted six, in addition to his old ones.

The danger was past and Maskull laughed, congratulating himself on having got off so easily.  Then he wondered what the new organs were for—­whether they were a good or a bad thing.  He had not taken a dozen steps up the ravine before he found out.  Just as he was in the act of jumping down from the top of a boulder, his vision altered and he came to an automatic standstill.  He was perceiving two worlds simultaneously.  With his own eyes he saw the gorge as before, with its rocks, brook, plant-animals, sunshine, and shadows.  But with his acquired eyes he saw differently.  All the details of the valley were visible, but the light seemed turned down,