might swear, are the descendants of a native stock which had changed its name.
Little importance is attached to their family names by the Colymbians, so that it is only a few who go to the trouble to change them, even if they are decidedly ugly. It is not considered etiquette to address any one by his family name, but only by the name of his choice. Thus it often happens that some very intimate friends do not actually know one another's surnames. It is only on the solemn occasion of taking a lease of a house that the surname is used at all. In society one only hears people called by their chosen name, as Ajax, Rupert, Gustavus, or Daisy, Cleopatra, Lucretia, &c.
But it is not only in their names that the Colymbians go on quite opposite principles from those that obtain among terrestrials. In the selection of persons to fill the various offices under Government, they also seem to act on principles the exact reverse of what we consider the right method. They never give a place to any one who has given evidence of his fitness for it by an acquaintance with the matter with which he will afterwards have to deal; but only to one whose whole previous career shows him to be entirely ignorant of it. Thus, if it is an inspectorship of public buildings that has to be filled up, one who is utterly ignorant of architecture is appointed, and the new inspector, on entering on his duties, is accustomed to boast of his peculiar fitness for the post, by reason of knowing nothing of the construction of houses. In consequence of his entire ignorance, he would say, he would be able to fulfil the duties entrusted to him with strict impartiality, free from all prejudices in favour or against any particular method of building. If, under his supervision, houses are built that soon fall to pieces,
