s considered the best authority on that
interesting subject.

* The animal here referred to has many points of difference from the
tiger of the upper world. It is larger, and with a broader paw, and
still more receding frontal. It haunts the side of lakes and pools,
and feeds principally on fishes, though it does not object to any
terrestrial animal of inferior strength that comes in its way. It is
becoming very scarce even in the wild districts, where it is devoured
by gigantic reptiles. I apprehended that it clearly belongs to the tiger
species, since the parasite animalcule found in its paw, like that in
the Asiatic tiger, is a miniature image of itself.

But the researches of the sages are not confined to such subtle or
elegant studies. They comprise various others more important, and
especially the properties of vril, to the perception of which their
finer nervous organisation renders the female Professors eminently keen.
It is out of this college that the Tur, or chief magistrate, selects
Councillors, limited to three, in the rare instances in which novelty of
event or circumstance perplexes his own judgment.

There are a few other departments of minor consequence, but all are
carried on so noiselessly, and quietly that the evidence of a government
seems to vanish altogether, and social order to be as regular and
unobtrusive as if it were a law of nature. Machinery is employed to an
inconceivable extent in all the operations of labour within and without
doors, and it is the unceasing object of the department charged with its
administration to extend its efficiency. There is no class of labourers
or servants, but all who are required to assist or control the machinery
are found in the children, from the time they leave the care of their
mothers to the marriageable age, which they place at sixteen for the
Gy-ei (the females), twenty for the Ana (the males). These children are
formed into bands and sections under their own chiefs, each following
the pursuits in which he is most pleased, or for which he feels himself
most fitted. Some take to handicrafts, some to agriculture, some to
household work, and some to the only services of danger to which the
population is exposed; for the sole perils that threaten this tribe are,
first, from those occasional convulsions within the earth, to foresee
and guard against which tasks their utmost ingenuity--irruptions of fire
and water, the storms of subterranean winds and escap