I am (said the benevolent Shade) the Prefect of this Island. Thy inclination to Philosophy has prepossessed me in thy favour: I have followed thee in thy late journey and defended thee from the hurricane. I will now show thee the rarities of the place; and then I will take care to restore thee safe to thy country. This Solitude with which thou art so charmed, stands in the midst of a tempestuous ocean of moving sands; it is an island surrounded with inaccessible desarts, which no mortal can pass without a supernatural aid. Its name is GIPHANTIA. It was given to the elementary spirits, the day before the Garden of Eden was allotted to the parent of mankind. Not that the spirits spend their time here in ease and sloth. What would you do, O ye feeble mortals! If dispersed in the air, in the sea, in the bowels of the earth, in the sphere of fire, they did not incessantly watch for your welfare? Without our care, the unbridled elements would long since have effaced all remains of the human kind. Why cannot we preserve you entirely from their disorderly sallies? Alass! our power extends not so far: we cannot totally screen you from all the evils that surround you: we only prevent your utter destruction. It is here the elementary spirits come to refresh themselves after their labours; it is here they hold their assemblies, and concert the best measures for the administration of the elements. CHAP. IV. THE REVERSE. Of all the Countries in the world (added the Prefect) Giphantia is the only one where nature still preserves her primitive vigor. She is incessantly labouring to increase the numerous tribes of Vegetables and Animals, and to produce new kinds. She organizes all with admirable skill; but she does not always succeed, in rendering them perpetual. The Mechanism of propagation is the master-piece of her wisdom: sometimes she fails and her productions return for ever into nothing. We cherish, with our utmost care, such as are sufficiently organized to produce their kind; and then plant them out in the Earth. A Naturalist wonders sometimes to find plants that had never been noticed before: it is because we had just then supplied the earth with them, of which he had not the least suspicion. Sometimes also these Exotics not meeting with a proper Climate, decay by degrees and the species is lost. Such are those productions which are mention’d by the Antients and which the Moderns complain are no where to be found. Such a plant still subsists but has long droop’d, and lost its qualities, and deceives the Physician who is daily disappointed. The Art is blam’d; it is not known that the fault is in Nature. I have now a collection of new simples of the greatest virtue; and I should have imparted them to mankind before now, had there not been strong reasons to induce me to delay it.