THE HYPO DERMA TIKOSYRINGOPHOROT 



J 93 



differentiated from the general somatic cavity. This is all 

 very valuable, and indeed I hold that, for purposes of men- 

 tal drill, a good handbook of zoology or botany is second 

 only to the Latin grammar or Euclid. But I am not a 

 pedagogue, not yet a " scientist " (vile word !) sorting the 

 museum of nature. I am only an exile endeavouring to 

 work a successful existence in Dustypore, and not to let 

 my environment shape me, as a pudding takes the shape 

 of its mould, but to make it tributary to my own happi- 

 ness. From this standpoint the naturalist's classification, 

 however just, is not useful. Some other arrangement of 

 animals is required, founded more on their behaviour 

 than their stomachs, on the disposition of their minds 

 towards us, rather than on the disposition of their nervous 

 ganglia. 



In such an arrangement snakes, scorpions, centipedes, and 

 the biscobra would all be included under one genus, since, 

 in that aspect of them which I am now fronting, they all 

 present one salient feature, viz., that they all carry about 

 with them an instrument to be used for the purpose of in- 

 jecting a poisonous liquor into our persons. That which 

 makes a scorpion a scorpion is clearly not that it has claws 

 like a crab, nor that it has eight legs like a spider, nor that 



