ible throat, and a low receding forehead, not
at all the ideal of a sage's. He has bright brown prominent eyes, a very
wide mouth and high cheekbones, and a muddy complexion. According to
tradition, this philosopher had lived to a patriarchal age, extending
over many centuries, and he remembered distinctly in middle life his
grandfather as surviving, and in childhood his great-grandfather; the
portrait of the first he had taken, or caused to be taken, while yet
alive--that of the latter was taken from his effigies in mummy.
The portrait of his grandfather had the features and aspect of the
philosopher, only much more exaggerated: he was not dressed, and the
colour of his body was singular; the breast and stomach yellow, the
shoulders and legs of a dull bronze hue: the great-grandfather was a
magnificent specimen of the Batrachian genus, a Giant Frog, 'pur et
simple.'

Among the pithy sayings which, according to tradition, the philosopher
bequeathed to posterity in rhythmical form and sententious brevity, this
is notably recorded: "Humble yourselves, my descendants; the father of
your race was a 'twat' (tadpole): exalt yourselves, my descendants, for
it was the same Divine Thought which created your father that develops
itself in exalting you."

Aph-Lin told me this fable while I gazed on the three Batrachian
portraits. I said in reply: "You make a jest of my supposed ignorance
and credulity as an uneducated Tish, but though these horrible daubs
may be of great antiquity, and were intended, perhaps, for some
rude caracature, I presume that none of your race even in the less
enlightened ages, ever believed that the great-grandson of a Frog became
a sententious philosopher; or that any section, I will not say of the
lofty Vril-ya, but of the meanest varieties of the human race, had its
origin in a Tadpole."

"Pardon me," answered Aph-Lin: "in what we call the Wrangling or
Philosophical Period of History, which was at its height about seven
thousand years ago, there was a very distinguished naturalist, who
proved to the satisfaction of numerous disciples such analogical and
anatomical agreements in structure between an An and a Frog, as to
show that out of the one must have developed the other. They had some
diseases in common; they were both subject to the same parasitical worms
in the intestines; and, strange to say, the An has, in his structure, a
swimming-bladder, no longer of any use to him, but which is a rudiment