evelopment of perceptions came a comparison of them;
judgments were reached and compared, and thus reason and the power to
reason were born upon Barsoom.

"Ages passed. Many forms of life came and went upon the Tree of Life,
but still all were attached to the parent plant by stems of varying
lengths. At length the fruit tree consisted in tiny plant men, such as
we now see reproduced in such huge dimensions in the Valley Dor, but
still hanging to the limbs and branches of the tree by the stems which
grew from the tops of their heads.

"The buds from which the plant men blossomed resembled large nuts about
a foot in diameter, divided by double partition walls into four
sections. In one section grew the plant man, in another a
sixteen-legged worm, in the third the progenitor of the white ape and
in the fourth the primaeval black man of Barsoom.

"When the bud burst the plant man remained dangling at the end of his
stem, but the three other sections fell to the ground, where the
efforts of their imprisoned occupants to escape sent them hopping about
in all directions.

"Thus as time went on, all Barsoom was covered with these imprisoned
creatures. For countless ages they lived their long lives within their
hard shells, hopping and skipping about the broad planet; falling into
rivers, lakes, and seas, to be still further spread about the surface
of the new world.

"Countless billions died before the first black man broke through his
prison walls into the light of day. Prompted by curiosity, he broke
open other shells and the peopling of Barsoom commenced.

"The pure strain of the blood of this first black man has remained
untainted by admixture with other creatures in the race of which I am a
member; but from the sixteen-legged worm, the first ape and renegade
black man has sprung every other form of animal life upon Barsoom.

"The therns," and he smiled maliciously as he spoke, "are but the
result of ages of evolution from the pure white ape of antiquity. They
are a lower order still. There is but one race of true and immortal
humans on Barsoom. It is the race of black men.

"The Tree of Life is dead, but before it died the plant men learned to
detach themselves from it and roam the face of Barsoom with the other
children of the First Parent.

"Now their bisexuality permits them to reproduce themselves after the
manner of true plants, but otherwise they have progressed but little in
all the ages of their