"Certainly, if you wish it. In the first place, perhaps you will be kind enough to tell me how you are going to make your tunnel through the earth. It strikes me that the man who undertakes that job will have a pretty big contract on his hands. Possibly, however, you may not yet have thought about this matter."
Dr. Giles laughed. "If you can find any feature of the whole scheme that I have n't studied over for months," he said, "you will deserve a gold medal. And as, of course, the most important part of the undertaking consists precisely in the boring of the hole through the earth, it is this subject which has received my most careful consideration."
"Then you actually mean to say that you think it will be possible to dig a tunnel through the center of the earth?"
"Most certainly I do."
"But how will you set about it?"
"Just as I should set about digging a well," replied the doctor. "But, to expedite matters, I shall be obliged to devise special machinery that will do the work of hundreds of picks and shovels."
"I should think you would indeed need special
