THE GREAT DISCOVERY IN VEGETATION. 75 



riers were in the habit of putting then- heads fogether for the public 

 good. Wherever he went, you would see him holding some poor 

 victim by the button, expounding his great secret, and showing how 

 the progress, yes, the very existence of dogs, depended upon the 

 knowledge of his secret — since it would really explain in a moment 

 every thing that had been dark since the days when their great- 

 grandfathers were kept from drowning in the ark. Only let the 

 congress of greyhounds agree to pay him a million of money, and 

 he would make known principles that would make the distemper 

 cease, and all the other ills that dog-flesh is heir to, fade clean out 

 of memory. 



Some of the big dogs to whom he told his secret (always, re- 

 member, in the strictest confidence), shook their heads, and looked 

 wise ; others, to get rid of his endless lectures, gave him a certificate, 

 saying that Solomon was wrong when he said there was nothing 

 new under the sun ; and all agreed that there was no denying that 

 there is something in it, though they could not exactly say it was a 

 new discovery. , 



Finally, after a long time spent in lobbying, and after wise talks 

 with all the members that would listen to him, yes, and after exhib- 

 iting to every dog that had an hour to give him, his collection of 

 dogs' bones that had died solely because of the lamentable ignorance 

 of his secret in dogdom, he found a committee that took hold of 

 his doctrine in good earnest — quite determined to do justice to him, 

 and vote him a million if he deserved it, but, nevertheless, quite de- 

 termined not to be humbugged by any false doggerel, however 

 potent it might have been to terriers less experienced in this current 

 commodity of many modem philosophers. 



It was a long story that the committee were obliged to hear, 

 and there were plenty of hard words thrown in to puzzle terriers 

 who might not have had a scientific education in their youth. But 

 the dogs on the committee were not to be puzzled ; they seized hold 

 of the fundamental principle of the philosophic spaniel, tossed it, 

 and worried it, and shook it, till it stood out, at last, quite a simple 

 truth (how beautiful is deep philosophy), and it was this — 



The great secret of perfect instinct in dogs, is to keep their 



NOSES COOL. 



