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preferable to himself. Our sum-engines never drop a figure, nor our looms a stitch; the machine is brisk and active, when the man is weary; it is clear-headed and collected, when the man is stupid and dull; it needs no slumber, when man must sleep or drop; ever at its post, ever ready for work, its alacrity never flags, its patience never gives in; its might is stronger than combined hundreds, and swifter than the flight of birds; it can burrow beneath the earth, and walk upon the largest rivers and sink not. This is the green tree; what then shall be done in the dry?

"Who shall say that a man does see or hear? He is such a hive and swarm of parasites that it is doubtful whether his body is not more theirs than his, and whether he is anything but another kind of ant-heap after all. Might not man himself become a sort of parasite upon the machines? A kind of affectionate machine-tickling aphid?

"It is said by some that our blood is composed of infinite living agencies which go up and down the highways and byways of our bodies as people in the streets of a city. When we look down from a high place upon crowded thoroughfares, is it possible not to think of corpuscles of blood travelling through veins and nourishing the heart of the town to make it grow? No mention shall be made of sewers, nor of the hidden nerves which serve to communicate sensations from one part of the town's body to another."

Here the writer became again so hopelessly obscure that I was obliged to miss several pages. He resumes:—

"It can be answered that even though machines should hear never so well and speak never so wisely,