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in raw, inclement summers. He told me he did not doubt that in eight years more he should be able to supply the governor's gardens with sunshine at a reasonable rate; but he complained that his stock was low, and entreated me to give him something as an encouragement to ingenuity, especially since this had been a very dear year for cucumbers. I made him a small present, for my lord had furnished me with money on purpose, because he knew their practice of begging from all who go to see them.

I saw another at work to calcine ice into gunpowder; who likewise showed me a treatise he had written concerning the malleability of fire, which he intended to publish.

There was a most ingenious architect, who had contrived a new method for building houses, by beginning at the roof and working downwards to the foundation, which he justified to me by the like practice of those two prudent insects, the bee and the spider.

There was a man born blind, who had several apprentices in his own condition. Their employment was to mix colors for painters, which their master taught them to distinguish by feeling and smelling. It was indeed my misfortune to find them at that time not very perfect in their lessons, and the professor himself happened to be generally mistaken. This

1 There is an amusing paper of Swift's, entitled "The Humble Petition of the Colliers, Cooks, Cookmaids, Blacksmiths, Jackmakers, Braziers, and others," to the Mayor and Aldermen of the City of London, against “certain virtuosi, taking upon them the name and title of the Catoptrical Victuallers;" complaining of their "gathering, breaking, folding and bundling up the sunbeams, by the help of certain glasses, to make, produce,

and kindle up several new focuses or fires within these His Majesty's dominions; and there to boil, bake, stew, fry, and dress all sorts of victuals and provisions; to brew, distil spirits, smelt ore, and in general to perform all the offices of culinary fires;" and also stating that "the said Catoptrical Victuallers have undertaken, by burning-glasses made of ice, to roast an ox on the Thames next winter;" and then setting forth very humorously the evils to result from the operations of the company. This jen d' esprit is of a piece with the satire in the text, and may be supposed with reason to have been directed against similar philosophical absurdities. It was not real science that Swift attacked, but those chimerical and spurious studies with which the name has been too often injuriously associated.

artist is much encouraged and esteemed by the whole fraternity.1

In another apartment I was highly pleased with a projector who had found a device of ploughing the ground with hogs, to save the charges of ploughs, cattle, and labor. The method is this. in an acre of ground you bury, at six inches distance and eight deep, a quantity of acorns, dates, chestnuts, and other mast or vegetables whereof these animals are fondest; then you drive six hundred of them into the field, where, in a few days they will root up the whole ground in search of their feed, and make it fit for sowing, at the same time manuring it with their dung. It is true, upon experiment, they found the charge and trouble very great, and they had little or no crop. However, it is not doubted that his invention may be capable of great improvement.

I went into another room, where the walls and ceiling were all hung round with cobwebs, except a narrow passage for the artist to go in and out. At my entrance, he called aloud to me not to disturb his webs. He lamented the fatal mistake the world had been so long in of using silkworms while we had such plenty of domestic insects who infinitely excelled the former, because they understood how to weave as well as spin. And he proposed further that, by employing spiders, the charge of dyeing silks should be wholly saved, whereof I was fully convinced when he showed me a vast number of flies most beautifully colored, wherewith he fed his spiders, assuring us that the webs would take a tincture from them; and as he had them of all hues, he hoped to fit everybody's fancy, as soon as he could find proper food for the flies, of certain gums, oils, and other glutinous matter, to

1 Swift ridicules the opinions of some learned men, who maintained that it was not impossible for the blind to be taught to distinguish colors by the touch. Indeed, it is said that a Danish sculptor, named Bartolin, possessed that faculty. It is scarcely possible to over. estimate the exquisite sensibility of this sense in the blind. The great Nicholas Saunderson, who filled the chair of mathematics in Cambridge (blind from his first year,) could not only tell counterfeit from real coins when neither the sight nor touch of others could do so, but was aware of every cloud that passed over the sun; and could, when the air was calm, detect the nearness of objects by the pulsations of the air upon his face.

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