ant chemists Judge Vansittart J.
Sumner and Admiral Hudson W. Killigrew.

"They received us with open arms, and, after entertaining us at a
_recherche_ lunch, conducted us to the chemistry and analysis section
occupying a little over seventeen acres and employing a permanent staff
of thirteen thousand four hundred and thirty-two, assistants, among whom
are chemists, microscopists, sub-inventors, etc., etc. There it is that
the productive operations of Nature are studied and improved upon.

"'You must not imagine that we have any kind of sympathy or admiration
for Nature's system,' explained General S. J. Van Biene, hastening to
sweep away any false impression which we might have formed.

[Illustration: "THEY RECEIVED US WITH OPEN ARMS."]

"'On the contrary, we just entirely despise her and her ways, and should
have discarded her way back but for the prejudices of the consuming
public. It's just like this--the consumers still believe in natural
products, and so we have to go on reproducing them instead of starting
right away on our own lines and bringing out new and original
commodities far in advance of anything Nature can do. How we're
stultified you'll see as we work through. We just have to copy, anyway,
in place of originating. We make oysters, for example. Now quite a while
ago, our head chemist Major Madison B. Jefferson invented a new edible
way, finer in every essential than the oyster; but the consumers
wouldn't have it: they shied at it, and declared it wasn't wholesome;
and we had the whole stock on our hands, and had to vat it down again,
and recolour it, and make tomatoes of it. Then they took it down and
just chaired it round. Of course, we have to say we _grow_ the
products--that's another effect of popular prejudice; if we had said we
made those tomatoes, the public would have started right off again, and
talked of "adulteration," although our tomatoes whip Nature's by 50 per
cent, in all the elements of nutrition and flavour. Just taste this
one.'

"We hesitated, and the director, perceiving it, promptly consumed
another from the same case. Thus reassured, we ventured to nibble at the
artificial vegetable, and found it excellent in every respect--decidedly
superior to the natural product, as he had stated.

"'But,' we asked, 'do you not suffer considerable losses when these
products--necessarily perishable in the natural course of things--begin
to decay?'

[Illustration: "JUST TASTE THIS ONE."]