The Grand Academy

In one of my voyages, I went to the land of Balnibarbi where he met some really strange kinds of people

There was a most ingenious architect, who had invented a new method of building houses, by beginning at the roof and working downward to the foundations, which he justified to me, by the like practice of those two prudent insects, the bee and the spider.

There was a man born blind, who had several apprentices in his own condition. Their employment was to mix colours for painters, which their master taught them to distinguish by feeling and smelling. It was indeed my misfortune to find them at that time not very perfect in their lessons, and the professor himself happened to be generally mistaken. This artist is much encouraged and esteemed by the whole fraternity.

In another apartment, l was highly pleased with an agriculturist who had found a new method of ploughing the ground with hogs, to save the charges of ploughs, cattle, and labour. The method is this: an acre of ground you bury, at six inches distance and nine deep, a number of acorns, dates, chestnuts, and other vegetables, of which these animals are fondest. Then you drive six hundred or more of them into the field, where, in a few days, they will root up the whole garden in search of their food, and make it fit for sowing, at the same time manuring it with their dung. It is true, upon experiment, they found the charge and trouble very great, and they had little or no crop. However, it is not doubted that this invention may be capable of great improvement.

I went into another room, where the walls and ceiling were all hung round with cobwebs, except a narrow passage for a person to go in and out. At my entrance, a man, who said he was a weaver by profession, told me, not to disturb his Web. He proposed, that by employing spiders, the charge of dyeing silks should be wholly saved. I was fully convinced, when he showed me a vast number of flies most beautiful coloured, with which he fed his spiders, so that the webs would take the shade from them, and as he had them of all hues, he hoped to fit everybody's fancy, as soon as he could find proper food for the flies, that would make them take on the various colours.

I was at the mathematical school where the master taught his pupils, after a method scarce imaginable to us in Europe. The whole equation was written on a thin piece of paper, with edible ink. This the student was to swallow upon a fasting stomach, and for three days following, eat nothing but bread and water. As the paper digested, the ink would go to his brain, bearing the equation along with it. But the success rate had not yet been satisfactory, partly because of the naughtiness of the lads, to whom this paper is so nauseous, that they generally steal aside, and find ways to dispose of the paper, neither have they been yet persuaded to starve for as long as the method requires.