“As you do to make soap bubbles?” “Exactly.” So Herbert, puffing out his cheeks, blew through the cane, which he kept constantly turning about, in such a manner as to inflate the vitreous mass. Other quantities of the substance in fusion were added to the first, and the result was a bubble, measuring a foot in diameter. Then Smith took the cane again, and swinging it like a pendulum, he made this bubble lengthen into the shape of cylinder. This cylinder was terminated at either end by two hemispherical caps, which were easily cut off by means of a sharp iron dipped in cold water; in the same way the cylinder was cut lengthwise, and after having been heated a second time it was spread on the plate and smoothed with a wooden roller. Thus the first glass was made, and by repeating the operation fifty times they had as many glasses, and the windows of Granite House were soon garnished with transparent panes, not very clear, perhaps, but clear enough. As to the glassware, that was mere amusement. They took whatever shape happened to come at the end of the cane. Pencroff had asked to be allowed to blow in his turn and he enjoyed it, but he blew so hard that his products took the most diverting forms, which pleased him amazingly. During one of the excursions undertaken about this time a new tree was discovered, whose products added much to the resources of the colony. Smith and Herbert, being out hunting one day, went into the forests of the Far West, and as usual the lad asked the engineer a thousand questions, and as Smith was no sportsman, and Herbert was deep in physics and chemistry, the game did not suffer; and so it fell out that the day was nearly ended, and the two hunters were likely to have made a useless excursion, when Herbert, stopping suddenly, exclaimed joyfully:— “Oh, Mr. Smith, do you see that tree?” And he pointed out a shrub rather than a tree, as it was composed of a single stem with a scaly bark, and leaves striped with small parallel veins. “It looks like a small palm. What is it?” asked Smith. “It is a “cycas revoluta,” about which I have read in our Dictionary of Natural History.” “But I see no fruit on this shrub?” “No, sir, but its trunk contains a flour which Nature furnishes all ground.” “Is it a bread-tree?” “That’s it, exactly.” “Then, my boy, since we are waiting for our wheat crop, this is a valuable discovery. Examine it, and pray heaven you are not mistaken.” Herbert was not mistaken. He broke the stem of the cycas, which was composed of a glandular tissue containing a certain quantity of farinaceous flour, traversed by ligneous fibres and separated by concentric rings of the same substance. From the fecula oozed a sticky liquid of a disagreeable taste, but this could readily be removed by pressure. The substance itself formed a real flour of superior quality, extremely nourishing, and which used to be forbidden exportation by the laws of Japan.