themselves with food more than twelve times a year, or once a month. All
but gluttons and epicures must prefer this method to ours.

There is but one sex either of the cooking or any other animals in the
moon; they are all produced from trees of various sizes and foliage;
that which produces the cooking animal, or human species, is much more
beautiful than any of the others; it has large straight boughs and
flesh-coloured leaves, and the fruit it produces are nuts or pods, with
hard shells at least two yards long; when they become ripe, which is
known from their changing colour, they are gathered with great care, and
laid by as long as they think proper: when they choose to animate the
seed of these nuts, they throw them into a large cauldron of boiling
water, which opens the shells in a few hours, and out jumps the
creature.

Nature forms their minds for different pursuits before they come
into the world; from one shell comes forth a warrior, from another a
philosopher, from a third a divine, from a fourth a lawyer, from a fifth
a farmer, from a sixth a clown, &c. &c., and each of them immediately
begins to perfect themselves, by practising what they before knew only
in theory.

When they grow old they do not die, but turn into air, and dissolve like
smoke! As for their drink, they need none; the only evacuations they
have are insensible, and by their breath. They have but one finger upon
each hand, with which they perform everything in as perfect a manner
as we do who have four besides the thumb. Their heads are placed under
their right arm, and when are going to travel, or about any violent
exercise, they generally leave them at home, for they can consult them
at any distance; this is a very common practice; and when those of rank