chains from the girdle. The men's belts are more substantially made, and the weights can be increased or diminished at pleasure to suit the varying requirements of the wearer. It is desirable that the specific gravity should be sometimes greater, sometimes less, than that of water, and these alterations are easily effected.
The small party who accompanied me circled and gyrated around me in graceful curves until they brought me to the house assigned me for my residence.
The houses of Colymbia are of various sizes and various degrees of architectural beauty. One principle governs the construction of all. Whether the house consists of one or several rooms, of one or several stories, each room is fitted up with the view of allowing it to be used as a place of rest or repose.
Now, as the specific gravity of the body is considerably less than that of water, and as the weight-belts are generally removed during repose, the body has a tendency to ascend. Hence the floors of the rooms in the private houses in Colymbia are where the ceiling is with us, and the Colymbians sit down to rest or work and lie down to sleep at the top of the room.
The top of the room is grown over with living sponges so as to form a soft elastic bed or couch, the contact of which is very pleasant to the body. But as the slightest pressure against the couch of sponge would suffice to displace the body, straps, hoops or hooks are everywhere attached to the spongy bed, which can be readily fastened across the body or through which one or more limbs may be thrust, so as to retain the body on one spot.
The mouths of breathing-tubes are very freely distributed over every part of the interior of the house,
