precision if we named our toxic agent. Let it be daturon. To
you, my dear Summerlee, belongs the honour--posthumous, alas, but
none the less unique--of having given a name to the universal
destroyer, the Great Gardener's disinfectant. The symptoms of
daturon, then, may be taken to be such as I indicate. That it
will involve the whole world and that no life can possibly
remain behind seems to me to be certain, since ether is a
universal medium. Up to now it has been capricious in the places
which it has attacked, but the difference is only a matter of a
few hours, and it is like an advancing tide which covers one
strip of sand and then another, running hither and thither in
irregular streams, until at last it has submerged it all. There
are laws at work in connection with the action and distribution
of daturon which would have been of deep interest had the time
at our disposal permitted us to study them. So far as I can
trace them"--here he glanced over his telegrams--"the less
developed races have been the first to respond to its influence.
There are deplorable accounts from Africa, and the Australian
aborigines appear to have been already exterminated. The
Northern races have as yet shown greater resisting power than
the Southern. This, you see, is dated from Marseilles at
nine-forty-five this morning. I give it to you verbatim:--

"`All night delirious excitement throughout Provence. Tumult of
vine growers at Nimes. Socialistic upheaval at Toulon. Sudden
illness attended by coma attacked population this morning.
_peste foudroyante_. Great numbers of dead in the streets.
Paralysis of business and universal chaos.'

"An hour later came the following, from the same source:--