Much of the wool and camel’s hair produced in the Northwest is sent to Paotow, Suiyuan, to be shipped to Tientsin for export. Before hostilities about 15,000,000 catties were shipped annually from Paotow, of a total export of some 50,000,000 catties.

the patient did not wake, but tossed about on the dirty pillow, and grew hotter every moment.

Really small organisms (viruses and rickettsia, for instance) aren’t motile (for reasons we will soon be able to guess), but we can explore the consequences of their hypothetical mobility by resorting to science fiction. In a classic example of Hollywood science, the cast of the film The Fantastic Voyage (1966) is placed in a submarine, reduced tremendously in size, injected into the blood stream of a human being, and asked to cruise to the brain to correct some malady.

At any other time Jessamy would have laughed at the expressions that chased each other over his freckled face: crossness left over from his struggle with the baby; incredulity; distress; and finally delight.