IN A WORLD HALF AS LARGE. 683 



the mass of the hammer being eight times less, and the muscular 

 force being no more than eight times less, the velocity impressed 

 upon the hammer will not be half, but equal. The objection is well 

 founded; but then the phenomenon of the fall of the hammer will 

 not be the same as it would be on the earth. An observer situated 

 in the common center of the two suns would see the Martian's ham- 

 mer drop twice as fast as the terrestrian's. Or the objection might 

 take another form. The velocity of the hammer may remain propor- 

 tional, but the muscular exhaustion will be four times less, so that 

 the workman can quadruple the number of his blows. In this case 

 the temporal phenomenon, if I may call it that, will be changed. 

 At any rate, if he does not multiply his blows, the nail will not be 

 driven in in the same way. To whichever side we turn, we fall into 

 the same definitive conclusion. 



We further remark that the Martians can lift loads four times 

 as heavy as ours: first, because they do not have to carry them so 

 high; and, secondly, because the weight is only half as much. Thus 

 the unfortunate people who built the pyramids on Mars would 

 require only a quarter of the time. Consequently, Megamicros will 

 see all tasks that consist in raising weights performed four times as 

 rapidly. If he builds a house, it will be under roof before he could 

 have got it aboveground on the earth. Life thus passes more 

 rapidly on Mars than on the earth; and yet we can not think of 

 diminishing the length of the days, for then we would increase the 

 number in the year to fourteen hundred and sixty; for we have 

 supposed the new Martian year to be of the same length as that of 

 the earth. 



Megamicros, who has learned on the earth to reckon by terres- 

 trial measures, will have a new set to deal with when he is trans- 

 ported to the new Mars. Some may say that he will experience no 

 difficulty in this. They are mistaken. 



To speak first of measures of length and surface : If Megamicros 

 required six square metres of cloth to make himself a complete suit 

 of clothes when he was on the earth, he will need no more on Mars, 

 because the surface of his body which he has to cover is diminished 

 in the same proportion as that of the square metre, or as four to one. 

 But as the sun sends him no more heat there than our sun does to us, 

 the goods he will select must be at least as warm as on the earth. No 

 reduction, therefore, is possible in their thickness. Hence, if he 

 himself makes the goods he requires, if his wife knits his stockings 

 and his vests, they will be surprised at the amount of labor they will 

 have to expend, and the quantity of materials they will have to use 

 for the same purpose. With a skein of a hundred metres of yarn, 

 working with a double thread, they will not make more than half of 



