(*10)
      There were others that sprang from the substance of other
      vegetables; (*11) others that derived their substance from the
      bodies of living animals; (*12) and then again, there were others
      that glowed all over with intense fire; (*13) others that moved
      from place to place at pleasure, (*14) and what was still more
      wonderful, 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 our heads a heavy
      sack which proved to be filled with sand!’”

      “Stuff!” said the king. “‘It was just after this adventure that we encountered a
      continent of immense extent and prodigious solidity, but which,
      nevertheless, was supported entirely upon the back of a sky-blue
      cow that had no fewer than four hundred horns.’” (*18)

      “That, now, I believe,” said the king, “because I have read
      something of the kind before, in a book.”

      “‘We passed immediately beneath this continent, (swimming in
      between the legs of the cow), and, after some hours, found
      ourselves in a wonderful country indeed, which, I was informed by
      the man-animal, was his own native land, inhabited by things of
      his own species. This elevated the man-animal very much in my
      esteem, and in fact, I now began to feel ashamed of the
      contemptuous familiarity with which I had treated him; for I
      found that the man-animals in general were a nation of the most
      powerful magicians, who lived with worms in their brain, (*19)
      which, no doubt, served to stimulate them by their painful
      writhings and wrigglings to the most miraculous efforts of
      imagination!’”

      “Nonsense!” said the king. “‘Among the magicians, were domesticated several animals of very
      singular kinds; for example, there was a huge horse whose bones
      were iron and whose blood was boiling water. In place of corn, he
      had black stones for his usual food; and yet, in spite of so hard
      a diet, he was so strong and swift that he would drag a load more
      weighty than the grandest temple in this city, at a rate
      surpassing that of the flight of most birds.’” (*20)

      “Twattle!” said the king. “‘I saw, also, among these people a hen without feathers, but
      bigger than a camel; instead of flesh and bone she had iron and
      brick; her blood, like that of the horse, (to whom, in fact, she
      was nearly related,) was boiling water; and like him she ate
      nothing but wood or black stones. This hen brought forth very
      frequently, a hundred chickens in the day; and, after birth, they
      took up their residence for several weeks within the stomach of
      their mother.’” (*21)

      “Fal lal!” said the king. “‘One of this nation of mighty conjurors created a man out of
      brass and wood, and leather, and endowed him with such ingenuity
      that he would have beaten at chess, all the race of mankind with
      the exception of the great Caliph, Haroun Alraschid. (*22)
      Another of these magi constructed (of like material) a creature
      that put to shame even the genius of him who made it; for so
      great were its reasoning powers that, in a second, it performed
      calculations of so vast an extent that they would have required
      the united labor of fifty thousand fleshy men for a year. (*23)
      But a still more wonderful conjuror fashioned for himself a
      mighty thing that was neither man nor beast, but which had brains
      of lead, intermixed with a black matter like pitch, and fingers
      that it employed with such incredible speed and dexterity that it
      would have had no trouble in writing out twenty thousand copies
      of the Koran in an hour, and this with so exquisite a precision,
      that in all the copies there should not be found one to vary from
      another by the breadth of the finest hair. This thing was of
      prodigious strength, so that it erected or overthrew the
      mightiest empires at a breath; but its powers were exercised
      equally for evil and for good.’”

      “Ridiculous!” said the king. “‘Among this nation of necromancers there was also one who had in
      his veins the blood of the salamanders; for he made no scruple of
      sitting down to smoke his chibouc in a red-hot oven until his
      dinner was thoroughly roasted upon its floor.