all really bad language in this country. But the Great Public and its

Press know better, and "Scientists" they are, and when they emerge to

any sort of publicity, "distinguished scientists" and "eminent

scientists" and "well-known scientists" is the very least we call them.

Certainly both Mr. Bensington and Professor Redwood quite merited any of

these terms long before they came upon the marvellous discovery of which

this story tells. Mr. Bensington was a Fellow of the Royal Society and

a former president of the Chemical Society, and Professor Redwood was

Professor of Physiology in the Bond Street College of the London

University, and he had been grossly libelled by the anti-vivisectionists

time after time. And they had led lives of academic distinction from

their very earliest youth.

They were of course quite undistinguished looking men, as indeed all

true Scientists are. There is more personal distinction about the

mildest-mannered actor alive than there is about the entire Royal

Society. Mr. Bensington was short and very, very bald, and he stooped

slightly; he wore gold-rimmed spectacles and cloth boots that were

abundantly cut open because of his numerous corns, and Professor Redwood

was entirely ordinary in his appearance. Until they happened upon the

Food of the Gods (as I must insist upon calling it) they led lives of

such eminent and studious obscurity that it is hard to find anything

whatever to tell the reader about them.

Mr. Bensington won his spurs (if one may use such an expression of a

The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth