The present has grown much too blase to do anything but yawn when confronted with the wonders of science. Even hideous gases and death-dealing ultra-what rays have lost their power to amuse us. We smile at chemistry, and, save when we experiment with the fuse-box in the dark, ignore the extraordinary possibilities of electricity. Complex machinery is to us as an open primer, and we positively gape when someone mentions advanced physics.

Even so, however, Dr. Herbert Evans, of the University of California, gives us pause. We have attained our full growth, and we are fairly well satisfied, on the average, with our size. But if Dr. Evans can get unobserved to our collective dinner table and slip some of his new discovery into our soup, we shall become a nation of Goliaths Dr. Evans can quite literally make mountains out of molehills.

There are, of course, some advantages in possessing a longitudinally flexible shape. One could turn on the chandelier without getting up from the table, and clean out the chimney quite simply by taking the stuff in a succession of homeopathic doses. In fact, there is only one difficulty with the whole idea. So far, Dr. Evans has not yet announced a corresponding antidote.