fferent from
any known mineral production of the earth, were small fragments of a
very common rock in the mountains of Burma. In our first voyages we had
taken some of them with us as ballast; and those which we first threw
over, we afterwards learnt from the public journals, fell in France,
some of the others fell in India, but the greater number in the ocean.
Those which have fallen at other times, have been real fossils of the
moon, and either such stones as this I hold in my hand, or such metallic
substances as are repelled from that body, and attracted towards the
earth; and it is the force with which they strike the earth, which first
suggested the idea of a thunder-bolt.

"Our party were greatly amused at the disputations of a learned society
in Europe, in which they undertook to give a mathematical demonstration
that they could not be thrown from a volcano of the earth, nor from the
moon, but were suddenly formed in the atmosphere. I should as soon
believe that a loaf of bread could be made and baked in the atmosphere."

Finding that our landlord prided himself on his interior management, as
well as on that without doors, we expressed a wish to see some of his
household improvements. He readily consented, and conducted us at once
into his kitchen, and showed us inventions and contrivances out of
number, for saving fuel, and meat, and labour; in short, for saving
every thing but money. The large room into which he carried us, appeared
as a vast laboratory, from the infinite variety of pots, pans, skillets,
knives, forks, ladles, mortars, sieves, funnels, and other utensils of
metal, glass, pottery, and wood. The steam which he used for cooking,
was carried along a pipe under a succession of kettles and boilers,
descending in regular gradation, by which a great saving of fuel was
effected; and, to perfect this part of the apparatus, the pipe could be
removed, to give place to one of the size suited to the occasion.

His seven-guest pipe was now in use. The wood, which was all cut to the
same length, and channelled out to admit the free passage of the air,
was then duly placed in the stove, and set on fire; but the heat not
passing very readily through all the sinuosities of the pipe, he ordered
his head cook to screw on his exhauster. The man, in less than ten
minutes, unscrewed a plate at the farther end, and fixed on an air-pump,
made for the purpose, on which the door of the stove suddenly slammed
to. Our hos