though you had four hands, no feet, and were more apish than
the apes of all aperies. But if a hippopotamus major is ever discovered
in one single ape's brain, nothing will save your great-great-great-great-
great-great-great-great-great-great-great-greater-greatest-grandmother
from having been an ape too. No, my dear little man; always remember
that the one true, certain, final, and all-important difference between
you and an ape is, that you have a hippopotamus major in your brain, and
it has none; and that, therefore, to discover one in its brain will be a
very wrong and dangerous thing, at which every one will be very much
shocked, as we may suppose they were at the professor.--Though really,
after all, it don't much matter; because--as Lord Dundreary and others
would put it--nobody but men have hippopotamuses in their brains; so, if
a hippopotamus was discovered in an ape's brain, why it would not be
one, you know, but something else.

But the professor had gone, I am sorry to say, even further than
that; for he had read at the British Association at Melbourne,
Australia, in the year 1999, a paper which assured every one who found
himself the better or wiser for the news, that there were not, never
had been, and could not be, any rational or half-rational beings
except men, anywhere, anywhen, or anyhow; that _nymphs_, _satyrs_,
_fauns_, _inui_, _dwarfs_, _trolls_, _elves_, _gnomes_, _fairies_,
_brownies_, _nixes_, _wilis_, _kobolds_, _leprechaunes_, _cluricaunes_,
_banshees_, _will-o'-the-wisps_, _follets_, _lutins_, _magots_, _goblins_,
_afrits_, _marids_, _jinns_, _ghouls_, _peris_, _deevs_, _angels_,
_archangels_, _imps_, _bogies_, or worse, were nothing at all, and pure
bosh and wind. And he had to get up very early in the morning to prove
that, and to eat his breakfast overnight; but he did it, at least to his
own satisfaction. Whereon a certain great divine, and a very clever
divine was he, called him a regular Sadducee; and probably he was quite
right. Whereon the professor, in return, called him a regular Pharisee;
and probably he was quite right too. But they did not quarrel in the
least; for, when men are men of the world, hard words run off them like
water off a duck's back. So the professor and the divine met at dinner
that evening, and sat together on the sofa afterwards for an hour, and
talked over the state of female labour on the antarctic continent (for
nobody talks shop after his claret), and each