In the _Swiss Family Robinson_ the resources of Natural History have been largely, and perhaps somewhat freely, drawn upon. This branch of knowledge has, therefore, been left throughout the present volume comparatively untouched. Nevertheless, as it is the aim of the narrator to combine instruction with amusement, the more elementary phenomena of the Physical Sciences have been blended with the current of the story--thus garnishing, as it were, the dry, hard facts of Owen, Liebig, and Arago, with the more attractive, groupings of life and action. The reader has, consequently, in hand a _mélange_ of the useful and agreeable--a little for the grave and a little for the gay--so that, should our endeavors to impart instruction prove unavailing, _en revanche_ we may, perhaps, be more successful in our efforts to amuse. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. The Colony--Reflections on the Past--Ideas of Willis the Pilot--Sophia Wolston CHAPTER II. To what extent Willis the Pilot had Ideas on certain Subjects--The Knights of the Ocean CHAPTER III. Wherein Willis the Pilot proves "Irrefragably" that Ephemerides die of Consumption and Home-Sickness--The Canoe and its Young ones--The Search after the Sloop--Found--The Sword-Fish--Floating Atoms--Admiral Socrates CHAPTER IV. A Landscape--Sad Houses and Smiling Houses--Politeness in China--Eight Soups at Dessert--Wind Merchants--Another Idea of the Pilot's--Susan, vice Sophia CHAPTER V. Allotment of Quarters--A Horse Marine--Travelling Plants--Change of Dynasty in England--A Woman's Kingdom--Sheep converted into Chops--Resurrection of the Fried Fish--A Secret CHAPTER VI. The Queen's Doll--Rockhouse to Falcon's Nest--The Wind--Grasses--Admiral Homer--The Three Frogs--Oat Jelly--Esquimaux Astronomy--An Unknown CHAPTER VII. The Search for the Unknown--Three Fleets on Dry Land--The Indiscretions of a Sugar Cane--Larboard and Starboard--The supposed Sensibility of Plants--The Fly-trap--Vendetta--Root and Germ--Mine and Countermine--The Polypi--Oviparous and Viviparous--A Quid pro Quo CHAPTER VIII. Inhabitant of the Moon, Anthropophagian or Hobgoblin?--The Lacedemonian Stew of Madame Dacier--Utile Dulci--Tête-à-tête between Willis and his Pipe--Tobacco versus Birch--Is it for Eating?--Mosquitoes--The Alarm--Toby--The Nocturnal Expedition--We've got him CHAPTER IX. The Chimpanzee--Imperfect Negro, or Perfect Ape--The Harmonies of Nature--A Handful of Paws--A Stone Skin--Seventeen Spectacles on one Nose--Animalculæ--Pelion on Ossa--Ptolemy--Copernicus to Galileo--Metaphysics and Cosmogonies--A live Tiger CHAPTER X. The Pioneers--Excursion to Coromandel--Hindoo Fancies--A Caged Hunter--Louis XI and Cardinal Balue--A Furlong of News--Carnage--The Baronet and his seventeen Tigers--Fifty-four feet of Celebrity--Sterne's Window--Promenade of the Consciences--Emulation and Vanity CHAPTER XI.