Coming from eggs in which they have lain for five years, the period
of incubation, they step forth into the world perfectly developed
except in size. Entirely unknown to their mothers, who, in turn,
would have difficulty in pointing out the fathers with any degree of
accuracy, they are the common children of the community, and their
education devolves upon the females who chance to capture them as
they leave the incubator.
Their foster mothers may not even have had an egg in the incubator,
as was the case with Sola, who had not commenced to lay, until
less than a year before she became the mother of another woman's
offspring. But this counts for little among the green Martians, as
parental and filial love is as unknown to them as it is common among
us. I believe this horrible system which has been carried on for
ages is the direct cause of the loss of all the finer feelings and
higher humanitarian instincts among these poor creatures. From
birth they know no father or mother love, they know not the meaning
of the word home; they are taught that they are only suffered to
live until they can demonstrate by their physique and ferocity that
they are fit to live.
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