prevented the importation of specimens for dissection in their own
laboratories.

The formula of Miss Francis, now at length revealed in its entirety, was
discussed by everyone. There was hardly a man, woman or child who did
not dream of finding some means to destroy or halt the grass and thereby
make of himself an unparalleled benefactor. A new crop of suggestions
was harvested by the _Intelligencer_; in addition to the old they
included such expedients as reinoculating the grass with the
Metamorphizer in the hope either of its cannibalistically feeding upon
itself or becoming so infected with giantism as to blow up and
burst--the failure of the experiment on the Russian steppes was ignored
or forgotten by these contributors; building barriers of dryice; and the
use of infrared lamps.

One of the proposals which tickled the popular imagination was a plan
for vast areas to be roofed and glassenclosed, giant greenhouses to
offer refuge for mankind in the very teeth of the grass. Artesian wells
could be sunk, it was argued, power harnessed to the tides of the sea
and piped underground, the populace fed by means of concentrates or
hydroponic farming. Everyone--except those in authority, the ones who
would have to approve the expenditure of the vast sums necessary--thought
there was something in the idea, but nothing was done about it.

Many, believing physical means could be of little avail, suggested
metaphysical ones, and these were always punctiliously printed by the
_Intelligencer_. They ranged from disregarding the existence of the weed
and carrying on ordinary life as though it presented no threat, through
Holding the Correct Thought, praying daily for its miraculous
disappearance, preferably at a simultaneous moment, to reorganizing the
spiritual concepts of the human totality.

_51._ But even without the newspapers George Thario would have kept me
informed. "Piteous if not too comprehensive for small emotions," he
wrote in a letter only a little more intelligible than the stuff in his
notebooks. "Yesterday I stopped by a small farm or ranch as local
grandiloquence everseeking purple justification has it here. Submarginal
land the tabulating minds of governmentofficials (spectacles precise on
nosebridge, daily ration of exlax safe in briefcase) would have labeled
it, sitting in expectant unease on hilltops and the uncomfortable slopes
between. Dryfarming; the place illegally acquired from cattlerange (more
pro