largely diluted with air. These and a thousand other equally cogent reasons they adduced for the abandonment of the practice of mixing oxygen with the breathing air; but their efforts were unavailing, the people insisted on having oxygen in their air, and the very members of the society were fain to avail themselves of the mixture, and would have been heartily disgusted—so their enemies alleged—had they found the air-tubes supplied with unoxygenated air.
Then there were anti-gyrating societies, and these curiously enough, were chiefly composed of the zealous transcendental geographers; although dancing, which was the terrestrial analogue of gyrating, was especially mentioned in the books as being a favourite pastime of the unknown people. The society contended that the dancing of the latter was quite different in its nature from the gyrating of the Colymbians, that it was a solemn pas seul executed in privacy and never performed by two or more persons in public assemblies; though the books gave no intimation of the mode in which dancing was practised in the unknown country.
There were also societies for putting down the reading of works of fiction, for suppressing amusing lectures, for discouraging the use of personal ornaments, for prohibiting the eating of the flesh of reptiles, for emancipating the tethered seals, for putting a stop to the employment of the oral language, for the abolition of the punishment of deportation to the land. In short, there were societies for putting down almost every amusement and occupation of the people.
Though all these societies inveigh against the
