by a Barsoomian, could you not acknowledge it?"

"The First Born of Barsoom," he explained, "are the race of black
men of which I am a Dator, or, as the lesser Barsoomians would
say, Prince. My race is the oldest on the planet. We trace our
lineage, unbroken, direct to the Tree of Life which flourished in
the centre of the Valley Dor twenty-three million years ago.

"For countless ages the fruit of this tree underwent the gradual
changes of evolution, passing by degrees from true plant life to
a combination of plant and animal. In the first stages the fruit
of the tree possessed only the power of independent muscular action,
while the stem remained attached to the parent plant; later a brain
developed in the fruit, so that hanging there by their long stems
they thought and moved as individuals.

"Then, with the development 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