ilding houses, by beginning at the roof, and working downward 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 colours 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 artist is much encouraged and esteemed by the whole fraternity.

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 labour. 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 or more of them into the field,
where, in a few days, they will root up the whole ground in search of
their food, 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 this 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 coloured,
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 give a strength and
consistence to the threads."

There was an astronomer, who had undertaken to place a sun-dial upon the
great weathercock on the town-house, by adjusting the annual an