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.