As used at the present time, a certain amount of the growth-acid is poured directly about the seed at the time of planting.  This acid has a magical effect upon the soil and it is possible, by repeated fertilizing, to raise in two weeks a crop of zoftas, a vegetable similar to our potatoes.  For raising a crop in two weeks the fertilizer costs one-half the value of the zoftas, and for maturing a crop in four weeks the fertilizer costs about three-eighths of the value of the zoftas.

Thus it is possible to raise six of these crops in one of our years.  This law obtains throughout the whole vegetable creation.  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 triple the variety of nuts on Ploid, and they are used for food more generally than in our world.  There is no such an animal as a hog and no lard is used.  The substitute is found in four varieties of nut oil, the result of a sweet and clean vegetable growth.  Nuts are raised in great abundance, for they also supply the base for a spread just as appetizing and more economical than butter.

THEIR MODES OF TRAVEL.

The Ploidites have been traveling in the air for twenty-five hundred years, but they cannot control their air-ships sufficiently in all kinds of weather.  The atmosphere of Ploid is relatively lighter than ours, which has made aerial travel more difficult to perfect than it would be in our world.

The main traffic, both passenger and freight, is carried on by the Tube Line, a wonderful system perfected through thousands of years of painstaking labor.

Two immense tubes, lying side by side, each ten feet in diameter, made of a substance more durable than steel, form the road bed of this lightning system of travel.  The cigar-shaped cars have hard rubber-wheels and fit over raised bars all around on the inside of the immense Tube.

The motor power is called Sky-rallic, and is communicated throughout the whole Tube Line by Brosis, a porous metal running in thin narrow bands.