Another department, which might be called the foreign, communicated with the neighbouring kindred states, principally for the purpose of ascertaining all new inventions; and to a third department all such inventions and improvements in machinery were committed for trial.

Connected with this department was the College of Sages--a college especially favoured by such of the Ana as were widowed and childless, and by the young unmarried females, amongst whom Zee was the most active, and, if what we call renown or distinction was a thing acknowledged by this people (which I shall later show it is not), among the more renowned or distinguished.

It is by the female Professors of this College that those studies which are deemed of least use in practical life--as purely speculative philosophy, the history of remote periods, and such sciences as entomology, conchology, &c .-- are the more diligently cultivated.

Zee, whose mind, active as Aristotle's, equally embraced the largest domains and the minutest details of thought, had written two volumes on the parasite insect that dwells amid the hairs of a tiger's* paw, which work was considered the best authority on that interesting subject.
* The animal here referred to has many points of difference from the tiger of the upper world.

It is larger, and with a broader paw, and still more receding frontal.