on of
all the known animals, of which the sponge is at the bottom of the list,
and the monikin at the top!"

"Sponges are commonly uppermost," growled Noah.

"Sir," said I, with a disagreeable rising at the throat, "am I to
understand that your savans account man an animal in a middle state
between a sponge and a monkey?"

"Really, Sir John, this warmth is quite unsuited to philosophical
discussion--if you continue to indulge in it, I shall find myself
compelled to postpone the lecture."

At this rebuke I made a successful effort to restrain myself, although
my esprit de corps nearly choked me. Intimating, as well as I could, a
change of purpose, Dr. Reasono, who had stood suspended over his table
with an air of doubt, waved his tail, and proceeded:--

"Sponges, oysters, crabs, sturgeons, clams, toads, snakes, lizards,
skunks, opossums, ant-eaters, baboons, negroes, wood-chucks, lions,
Esquimaux, sloths, hogs, Hottentots, ourang-outangs, men and monikins,
are, beyond a question, all animals. The only disputed point among
us is, whether they are all of the same genus, forming varieties or
species, or whether they are to be divided into the three great families
of the improvables, the unimprovables, and the retrogressives. They
who maintain that we form but one great family, reason by certain
conspicuous analogies, that serve as so many links to unite the great
chain of the animal world. Taking man as a centre, for instance, they
show that this creature possesses, in common with every other creature,
some observable property. Thus, man is, in one particular, like a
sponge; in another, he is like an oyster; a hog is like a man; the
skunk has one peculiarity of a man; the ourang-outang another; the sloth
another--"

"King!"

"And so on, to the end of the chapter. This school of philosophers,
while it has been very ingeniously supported, is not, however, the one
most in favor just at this moment in the academy of Leaphigh--"

"Just at this moment, Doctor!"

"Certainly, sir. Do you not know that truths, physical as well as moral,
undergo their revolutions, the same as all created nature? The academy
has paid great attention to this subject; and it issues annually an
almanac, in which the different phases, the revolutions, the periods,
the eclipses, whether partial or total, the distances from the centre
of light, the apogee and perigee of all the more prominent truths, are
calculated with singular accuracy; and by