ful, we discovered flowers that lived and breathed and moved
their limbs at will and had, moreover, the detestable passion of mankind
for enslaving other creatures, and confining them in horrid and solitary
prisons until the fulfillment of appointed tasks.'" (*15)

"Pshaw!" said the king.

"'Quitting this land, we soon arrived at another in which the bees and
the birds are mathematicians of such genius and erudition, that they
give daily instructions in the science of geometry to the wise men
of the empire. The king of the place having offered a reward for the
solution of two very difficult problems, they were solved upon the
spot--the one by the bees, and the other by the birds; but the king
keeping their solution a secret, it was only after the most profound
researches and labor, and the writing of an infinity of big books,
during a long series of years, that the men-mathematicians at length
arrived at the identical solutions which had been given upon the spot by
the bees and by the birds.'" (*16)

"Oh my!" said the king.

"'We had scarcely lost sight of this empire when we found ourselves
close upon another, from whose shores there flew over our heads a flock
of fowls a mile in breadth, and two hundred and forty miles long; so
that, although they flew a mile during every minute, it required no less
than four hours for the whole flock to pass over us--in which there were
several millions of millions of fowl.'" (*17)

"Oh fy!" said the king.

"'No sooner had we got rid of these birds, which occasioned us great
annoyance, than we were terrified by the appearance of a fowl of another
kind, and infinitely larger than even the rocs which I met in my
former voyages; for it was bigger than the biggest of the domes on your
seraglio, oh, most Munificent of Caliphs. This terrible fowl had no head
that we could perceive, but was fashioned entirely of belly, which was
of a prodigious fatness and roundness, of a soft-looking substance,
smooth, shining and striped with various colors. In its talons, the
monster was bearing away to his eyrie in the heavens, a house from which
it had knocked off the roof, and in the interior of which we distinctly
saw human beings, who, beyond doubt, were in a state of frightful
despair at the horrible fate which awaited them. We shouted with all our
might, in the hope of frightening the bird into letting go of its prey,
but it merely gave a snort or puff, as if of rage and then let fall upon