FIGHTING THE INSECTS 



opportunity to feed comes, he goes at it in a momentary fit of energy, 

 swallows a fugitive negro baby, and then lies and digests and basks 

 in the sunlight while the barnacles gather undisturbed on his back. 



Zoologist: Your combination of alligators and barnacles is an un- 

 fortunate one. Alligators live in fresh water, and barnacles in salt 

 water. 



Author: You don't seem to be very familiar with the science of 

 geography. In the State of Chiapas in Mexico there is a place where 

 the salt water and the fresh water mingle, and where the alligators 

 have acquired a taste for brackish water, and the barnacles have 

 acquired a thirst for semi-freshwater, and they cohabit, the one upon 

 the other, in the most perfect harmony. 



Zoologist: If you had told that to another man, he might have be- 

 lieved it, but I was born in the State of Chiapas. 



Author: Then, under the new constitution of the Republic of 

 Mexico, adopted last month, you are a citizen of that country. What 

 are you doing, holding public office in the United States? 



Zoologist: I would be out of place if my statement of having been 

 born in the State of Chiapas were not exactly the same kind of state- 

 ment as yours about the alligators and the barnacles. 



Author: Nevertheless, I have a deep fellow sympathy for both the 

 alligator and the crocodile. 



A bystander: After all, what is the real difference between an alliga- 

 tor and a crocodile? 



Author: I'm not very familiar with the real structural differences, 

 but they have many points of resemblance. Both have low retreating 

 foreheads, and, consequendy, a rather inferior mentality. But each has 

 a different opsonic index. 



Zoologist: How essential a vocabulary is to a popular writer! 



Author: Yes, Doctor, that's all he needs! 



Artists are not so numerous in the Club as are scientific men. 

 I shall speak of Frank Millet, but there have been a number 

 of others, some of them of quite his rank, and still others of 

 very considerable reputations. On September 20, 1925, I made 

 a note of the fact that one of the greatest living American 

 sculptors, Paul Wayland Bartlett, had just died in Paris. I hap- 



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