of an inner garment."

"Pray, Azzageddi," said Media, "are you not a fool?"

"One of a jolly company, my lord; but some creatures besides wearing
their surtouts within, sport their skeletons without: witness the
lobster and turtle, who alive, study their own anatomies."

"Azzageddi, you are a zany."

"Pardon, my lord," said Mohi, "I think him more of a lobster; it's
hard telling his jaws from his claws."

"Yes, Braid-Beard, I am a lobster, a mackerel, any thing you please;
but my ancestors were kangaroos, not monkeys, as old Boddo erroneously
opined. My idea is more susceptible of demonstration than his. Among
the deepest discovered land fossils, the relics of kangaroos are
discernible, but no relics of men. Hence, there were no giants in
those days; but on the contrary, kangaroos; and those kangaroos formed
the first edition of mankind, since revised and corrected."

"What has become of our finises, or tails, then?" asked Mohi,
wriggling in his seat.

"The old question, Mohi. But where are the tails of the tadpoles,
after their gradual metamorphosis into frogs? Have frogs any tails,
old man? Our tails, Mohi, were worn off by the process of
civilization; especially at the period when our fathers began to adopt
the sitting posture: the fundamental evidence of all civilization, for
neither apes, nor savages, can be said to sit; invariably, they squat