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.

This Tube Line runs without a curve from one division of the road to
another, except in rare cases where a bend is absolutely necessary. In a
mountainous region I noticed a stretch of Tube Line without a bend
running sixty miles, according to our measurement. On prairies, the
unbroken stretches are much longer.

The cars in this Tube Line travel with fearful rapidity. It requires two
or three miles to reach dashing speed, after which a run of fifty miles
is made in eight or ten minutes. No precaution need be taken by the
motorman as nothing can get into the tube and only one train is allowed
in a section at one time. Certain hours are given to passenger traffic
and others to freight traffic. An immense amount of freight can thus be
carried in one hour. It is possible to send a through freight car two
thousand miles in ten or twelve hours. Express cars are never connected
with passengers cars. They are run on their own schedule and sometimes
attached to freight cars.

This immense Tube Line was built by the government at great expense, but
it is proving very satisfacto