unlikely of all the organs of the two animals, to prove, by their comparison, the identity of the creatures. For whereas the antennae of the lobster, as is well known, are enormously long and many-jointed, those of the flea are conspicuously short and few-jointed. I shall not attempt to give the exhaustive reasoning of the great naturalist, whereby he proves that in the antennae alone can the identity or difference of the two animals be discovered; for this occupies 324 pages of his great work on the subject, which has for its title a felicitous parody of Sir Joseph's imputed exclamation: "Fleas are true lobsters, bless their hearts!" It will suffice to say that Schnüffelpilz proved the identity of the flea and the lobster by the exact similarity of the distribution of the arteries at the base of the antennae of both animals.
While the scientific circles were still ringing with the plaudits of admiration elicited by this great discovery, and while the newspapers, catching the enthusiasm from the philosophers, were asking why some exalted order of nobility was not created for the purpose of appropriately rewarding such great discoveries as this, Schnüffelpilz was by no means contented with his labours, but was steadily prosecuting them to a further development. Not satisfied with having proved, to the satisfaction of the most prejudiced, the identity of origin of the flea and the lobster, he now set himself to solve this still more difficult problem, "Is the lobster an improved and highly developed flea, or is the flea a degraded lobster?"
In order to answer this most important question, he had to conduct simultaneously two sets of experiments. He had on the one hand to endeavour to adapt fleas to the habits of lobsters, and on the other to
