are in some localities natural
springs which give out slender streams of oxygen. You will learn by and
by what use the Saturnians make of this dangerous gas, which, as you
recollect, constitutes about one fifth of your own atmosphere. Saturn has
large lead mines, but no other metal is found on this planet. The
inhabitants have nothing else to make tools of, except stones and shells.
The mechanical arts have therefore made no great progress among them.
Chopping down a tree with a leaden axe is necessarily a slow process.

So far as the Saturnians can be said to have any pride in anything, it is
in the absolute level which characterizes their political and social
order. They profess to be the only true republicans in the solar system.
The fundamental articles of their Constitution are these:

All Saturnians are born equal, live equal, and die equal.

All Saturnians are born free,--free, that is, to obey the rules laid down
for the regulation of their conduct, pursuits, and opinions, free to be
married to the person selected for them by the physiological section of
the government, and free to die at such proper period of life as may best
suit the convenience and general welfare of the community.

The one great industrial product of Saturn is the bread-root. The
Saturnians find this wholesome and palatable enough; and it is well they
do, as they have no other vegetable. It is what I should call a most
uninteresting kind of eatable, but it serves as food and drink, having
juice enough, so that they get along without water. They have a tough,
dry grass, which, matted together, furnishes them with clothes
sufficiently warm for their cold-blooded constitutions, and more than
sufficiently ugly.

A piece of ground large enough to furnish bread-root for ten persons is
allotted to each head of a household, allowance being made for the
possible increase of families. This, however, is not a very important
consideration, as the Saturnians are not a prolific race. The great
object of life being the product of the largest possible quantity of
bread-roots, and women not being so capable in the fields as the stronger
sex, females are considered an undesirable addition to society. The one
thing the Saturnians dread and abhor is inequality. The whole object of
their laws and customs is to maintain the strictest equality in
everything,--social relations, property, so far as they can be said to
have anything which can be so called, mode