that of the fishes.  However, in such a form as the degraded ‘Chondracanthus,’ the structure has diverged far more widely from its original type than in man.  Among some of these most highly modified crustaceans the whole of the alimentary canal—­that is, all the food-digesting and food-absorbing parts—­form a useless solid cord:  the animal is nourished—­it is a parasite—­by absorption of the nutritive fluid in which it swims.  Is there any absolute impossibility in supposing man to be destined for a similar change; to imagine him no longer dining, with unwieldy paraphernalia of servants and plates, upon food queerly dyed and distorted, but nourishing himself in elegant simplicity by immersion in a tub of nutritive fluid?

“There grows upon the impatient imagination a building, a dome of crystal, across the translucent surface of which flushes of the most glorious and pure prismatic colours pass and fade and change.  In the centre of this transparent chameleon-tinted dome is a circular white marble basin filled with some clear, mobile, amber liquid, and in this plunge and float strange beings.  Are they birds?

“They are the descendants of man—­at dinner.  Watch them as they hop on their hands—­a method of progression advocated already by Bjornsen—­about the pure white marble floor.  Great hands they have, enormous brains, soft, liquid, soulful eyes.  Their whole muscular system, their legs, their abdomens, are shrivelled to nothing, a dangling, degraded pendant to their minds.”

The further visions of the Professor are less alluring.

“The animals and plants die away before men, except such as he preserves for his food or delight, or such as maintain a precarious footing about him as commensals and parasites.  These vermin and pests must succumb sooner or later to his untiring inventiveness and incessantly growing discipline.  When he learns (the chemists are doubtless getting towards the secret now) to do the work of chlorophyll without the plant, then his necessity for other animals and plants upon the earth will disappear.  Sooner or later, where there is no power of resistance and no necessity, there comes extinction.  In the last days man will be alone on the earth, and his food will be won by the chemist from the dead rocks and the sunlight.

“And—­one may learn the full reason in that explicit and painfully right book, the Data of Ethics—­the irrational fellowship of man will give place to an intellectual co-operation, and emotion fall within the scheme of reason.  Undoubtedly it is a long time yet, but a long time is nothing in the face of eternity, and every man who dares think of these things must look eternity in the face.”