(for it is fortunately not met with every day),
the tape-worm, which fixes itself in the human
intestine, and feeds on chyme as the earth-worm
feeds on garden mould. Now, the tape-worm,
with its indefinite chain of rings, is no other
than a long Indian file of perfectly distinct
individuals—so distinct that, from time to time,
rings are detached which fall off of themselves,
like fruit arrived at maturity, and take their
departure to live elsewhere and become the
parents of a new band of parasites, provided
some lucky chance introduce them to another
intestine, the only place and climate which suits
their delicate constitution. Enthusiastic persons
have lived, who, in their zeal for the cause of
science, have swallowed morsels of tape-worm,
and have perfectly succeeded in rearing fine
specimens in their own interior—and at their own
expense, the cost nearly amounting to loss of life.

Man, we are told, is but a worm. And not
only is man a worm himself, but he contains
within him several worms. I do not allude to
the internal parasites with which you may illustrate
the numeration table—counting them by
units, ten, hundreds, or thousands—from the
mostly solitary species above alluded to, to the
multitudinous ascaris; but to far more aristocratical
representatives of things vermicular.

Did you ever watch a worm or a leech crawling
across a plate or a table? On the surface
of its body, a wave-like swelling passes from the
tail to the head, as if some solid substance or
ball was rolling forwards withinside the creature.
If you could see your own oesophagus, or gullet,
performing its functions, you would observe an
exactly similar movement, which has been called
vermicular, on account of its resemblance to a
worm in motion.

You may strike off from your list of friends
the man who heedlessly would set foot upon a
worm, not merely for his cruelty but for his
heedlessness. A miserable earth-worm can teach
him more than enters into most men's philosophy.
A worm has been defined to be an
independent, creeping, digestive tube. The worm
is the starting-point of a long ascensional animal
scale. It is the rudimental form of all the
complex organisations which come after it. What
is it composed of? Of a tube, itself composed
of rings. On this tube, as a foundation, the
animal machine has been built; and these rings,
developed and modified in a thousand ways, have
given rise to the multiform creatures which
drive classificators to despair, because they will
not understand that the animal creation must be
one, since there is only one Creator. Animals
higher than the worm are, therefore, digestive
tubes — with additions and ornaments, and served
by organs; but those ornaments and additions
do not allow us to ignore the vermicular life
which exists, however unfelt and unsuspected,
within them.

Each of our organs is a distinct being, which
has its own proper nature and its special
function—its life apart, consequently. Our life
is the sum total of all these united little lives
melting together, by a mysterious combination,
into one single common life, which is everywhere
in general, and nowhere in particular.

The worm, then, is a creeping digestive tube.
Our digestive tube has never ceased to crawl
and writhe from the moment when we came into
the world. Hidden within us, invisibly crouched
in its palace, like an Oriental despot who leaves
his slaves to provide for all his wants, it is
constantly replenished, not with coarse earth,
but with delicate chyme extracted for it by its
servants, the hands, the mouth, the teeth, the
tongue, the throat, and the stomach. But the
humble worm is the veritable primitive animal.
The oyster has been regarded as a primitive
animal; but it is, comparatively, of high degree;
for, like man, it also contains a worm within itself.

Below the worm, the animal properly so called
ceases. Zoophytes are animals, if you will,
animated plants, if you prefer it. Their name has
been expressly chosen to denote their double and
ambiguous nature. Some of them, as the coral
polypes, are the intersection or the point of
junction between the three kingdoms of nature
—the animal, vegetable, and mineral; namely,
an animal vegetation giving as its result a mineral
mass extracted from sea-water by an infinity of
little living retorts, which continue to this day,
beneath our eyes, their work commenced at the
beginning of the world—which is no less than
the fabrication of continents for the use of future
generations. Such is the task incessantly performed
by creatures who are the worm's inferiors.

DEPRAVATIONS OF ENGLISH.

Our mother English is threatened with a
deluge of barbarisms. We are extending its
bounds so rapidly and recklessly that we shall
soon be obliged to publish a new edition of our
standard Dictionaries every year, as we do of
our Directories, Peerages, and Parliamentary
Guides. "Who's who in 1863?" is not so
importanta question as "What's what?" One
cannot take up a paper without very quickly
being brought to a stand-still by some new word
for which we consult our Johnson in vain. Such
words grow like mushrooms, or like riddles; and,
as in the latter case, nobody seems to know where
they come from, or who made them; for the
authors, with singular modesty, never step
forward to claim their laurels. Old words, too,
are twisted into unwonted shapes; nouns do
duty as verbs; the eccentricities of slang are
adopted in grave discussions; and it is somewhat
difficult for a man whose conception of the
language was fixed twenty years ago to keep up
with this wild masquerade of neologisms.

The national love of slang has a good deal to
do with the growing depravation of our classical
tongue. Slang, no doubt, has existed at all
times, but never with such grave and respectable
countenance as now. We find it in
Shakespeare; but Shakespeare only wrote it
dramatically, when depicting such characters as Nym,
Bardolph, and Pistol. We find it in the pages
of the Tatler and the Spectator, with the same