mistry, mathematics and astronomy were also
taught. The training in such studies finds its analogy among
ourselves, but the object towards which the teachers' efforts were
mainly directed, was the development of the pupil's psychic faculties
and his instruction in the more hidden forces of nature. The occult
properties of plants, metals, and precious stones, as well as the
alchemical processes of transmutation, were included in this category.
But as time went on it became more and more the personal power, which
Bulwer Lytton calls vril, and the operation of which he has fairly
accurately described in his _Coming Race_, that the colleges for the
higher training of the youth of Atlantis were specially occupied in
developing. The marked change which took place when the decadence of
the race set in was, that instead of merit and aptitude being regarded
as warrants for advancement to the higher grades of instruction, the
dominant classes becoming more and more exclusive allowed none but
their own children to graduate in the higher knowledge which gave so
much power.

In such an empire as the Toltec, agriculture naturally received much
attention. Not only were the labourers taught their duties in
technical schools, but colleges were established in which the
knowledge necessary for carrying out experiments in the crossing both
of animals and plants, were taught to fitting students.

As readers of Theosophic literature may know, _wheat_ was not evolved
on this planet at all. It was the gift of the Manu who brought it from
another globe outside our chain of worlds. But oats and some of our
other cereals are the results of crosses between wheat and the
indigenous grasses of the earth. Now the experiments which gave these
results were carried out in the agricultural schools of Atlantis. Of
course such experiments were guided by high knowledge. But the most
notable achievement to be recorded of the Atlantean agriculturists was
the evolution of the plantain or banana. In the original wild state it
was like an elongated melon with scarcely any pulp, but full of seeds
as a melon is. It was of course only by centuries (if not thousands of
years) of continuous selection and elimination that the present
seedless plant was evolved.

Among the domesticated animals of the Toltec days were creatures that
looked like very small tapirs. They naturally fed upon roots or
herbage, but like the pigs of to-day, which they resembled in more
than