are wounded
by them die immediately. Their shields are made of mushrooms, and their
darts (when radishes are out of season) of the tops of asparagus. Some
of the natives of the dog-star are to be seen here; commerce tempts them
to ramble; their faces are like large mastiffs', with their eyes near
the lower end or tip of their noses: they have no eyelids, but cover
their eyes with the end of their tongues when they go to sleep; they are
generally twenty feet high. As to the natives of the moon, none of them
are less in stature than thirty-six feet: they are not called the human
species, but the cooking animals, for they all dress their food by fire,
as we do, but lose not time at their meals, as they open their left
side, and place the whole quantity at once in their stomach, then shut
it again till the same day in the next month; for they never indulge
themselves with food more than twelve times a year, or once a month. All
but gluttons and epicures must prefer this method to ours.

There is but one sex either of the cooking or any other animals in the
moon; they are all produced from trees of various sizes and foliage;
that which produces the cooking animal, or human species, is much more
beautiful than any of the others; it has large straight boughs and
flesh-coloured leaves, and the fruit it produces are nuts or pods, with
hard shells at least two yards long; when they become ripe, which is
known from their changing colour, they are gathered with great care, and
laid by as long as they think proper: when they choose to animate the
seed of these nuts, they throw them into a large cauldron of boiling
water, which opens the shells in a few hours, and out jumps the
creature.

Nature forms their minds for different pursuits before they come
into the world; from one shell comes forth a warrior, from another a
philosopher, from a third a divine, from a fourth a lawyer, from a fifth
a farmer, from a sixth a clown, &c. &c., and each of them immediately
begins to perfect themselves, by practising what they before knew only
in theory.

When they grow old they do not die, but turn into air, and dissolve like
smoke! As for their drink, they need none; the only evacuations they
have are insensible, and by their breath. They have but one finger upon
each hand, with which they perform everything in as perfect a manner
as we do who have four besides the thumb. Their heads are placed under
their right arm, and when are going to tra