`Well, my spherical friend (as I am proud to call him) set himself to investigate the causes of this. He found them to be three. One; that it is a perfect sphere. Two; that it moves in a straight line. Three; that its direction is not upwards. When these three conditions are fulfilled, you get Accelerated Velocity.'

`Hardly,' I said: `if you will excuse my differing from you. Suppose we apply the theory to horizontal motion. If a bullet is fired horizontally, it--'

`--it does not move in a straight line,' he quietly finished my sentence for me.

`I yield the point,' I said. `What did your friend do next?'

`The next thing was to apply the theory, as you rightly suggest, to horizontal motion. But the moving body, ever tending to fall, needs constant support, if it is to move in a true horizontal line. "What, then," he asked himself, "will give constant support to a moving body?" And his answer was "Human legs!" That was the discovery that immortalized his name!'

`His name being--?' I suggested.

`I had not mentioned it,' was the gentle reply of my most unsatisfactory informant. `His next step was an obvious one. He took to a diet of suet-dumplings, until his body had become a perfect sphere. Then he went out for his first experimental run--which nearly cost him his life!'

`How was that?'

`Well, you see, he had no idea of the tremendous new Force in Nature that he was calling into play. He began too fast. In a very few minutes he found himself moving at a hundred miles an hour! And, if he had not had the presence of mind to charge into the middle of a haystack (which he scattered to the four winds) there can be no doubt that he would have left the Planet he belonged to, and gone right away into Space!'

`And how came that to be the last of the Cub-Hunts?' I enquired.

`Well, you see, it led to a rather scandalous dispute between two of the Colleges. Another Principal had laid his hand on the young one, so nearly at the same moment as the spherical one, that there was no knowing which had touched him first. The dispute got into print, and did us no credit, and, in short, Cub-Hunts came to an end. Now I'll tell you what cured us of that wild craze of ours, the bidding against each other, for the clever scholars, just as if they were articles to be sold by auction! Just when the craze had reached its highest point, and when one of the Colleges had actually advertised a Scholarship of one thousand pounds per annum, one of our tourists brought us the manuscript of an old African legend--I happen to have a copy of it in my pocket. Shall I translate it for you?'

`Pray go on,' I said, though I felt I was getting very sleepy.