buoyancy, hitherto unfelt.

Flathootly told me he felt like jumping over the mast in his
newly-found vigor of action, and the sailors began a series of antics
quite foreign to their late stolid behavior. I felt myself possessed
of a very elastic step and a similar desire to jump overboard and leap
miles out to sea. I felt that I could easily jump a distance of
several miles.

Professor Starbottle explained this phenomenal activity by stating
that on the outer surface of the earth a man who weighs one hundred
and fifty pounds, would weigh practically nothing on the interior
surface of an earth shell of any equal thickness throughout. But the
fact that we did weigh something, and that the ship and ocean itself
remained on the under surface of the world, proved that the shell of
the earth, naturally made thicker at the equator by reason of
centrifugal gravity than at the poles, has sufficient equatorial
attraction to keep open the polar gulf. Besides this centrifugal
gravity confers a certain degree of weight on all objects in the
interior sphere.

"I'll get a pair of scales," said Flathootly, "an' see how light I am
in weight."

"Don't mind scales," said the professor, "for the weights themselves
have lost weight."

"Well, I'm one hundred and seventy-five pounds to a feather," said
Flathootly, "an' I'll soon see if the weights are right or not."

"The weights are right enough," said the professor, "and yet they are
wrong."

"An' how can a thing be roight and wrang at the same time, I'd loike
to know? We'll thry the weights anyway," said the Irishman.

So saying, Flathootly got a little weighing machine on deck, and,
standing thereon, a sailor piled on the weights on the opposite side.

He shouted out: "There now, do you see that? I'm wan hundred and
siventy-siven pounds, jist what I always was."

"My dear sir," said the professor, "you don't seem to understand this
matter; the weights have lost weight equally with yourself, hence they
still appear to you as weighing one hundred and seventy-seven pounds."

"Excuse me, sorr," said Flathootly. "If the weights have lost weight,
the chap that stole it was cute enough to put it back again before I
weighed meself. Don't you see wid yer two eyes I'm still as heavy as
iver I was?"

"You will require ocular demonstration that what I say is correct.
Here, sir, let me weigh you with this instrument," said the professor.

The instrument referred to was a huge spring-