on of the
species from the human family--"

"This may do very well, sir, for the latitude of Leaphigh, but permit
me to say that no human historian, from Moses down to Buffon, has ever
taken such a view of our respective races. There is not a word in any of
all these writers on the subject."

"How should there be, sir? History is not a prediction, but a record
of the past. Their silence is so much negative proof in our favor. Does
Tacitus, for instance, speak of the French revolution? Is not Herodotus
silent on the subject of the independence of the American continent?--or
do any of the Greek and Roman writers give us the annals of
Stunin'tun--a city whose foundations were most probably laid some time
after the commencement of the Christian era? It is morally impossible
that men or monikins can faithfully relate events that have never
happened; and as it has never yet happened to any man, who is still a
man, to be translated to the monikin state of being, it follows, as a
necessary consequence, that he can know nothing about it. If you want
historical proof, therefore, of what I say, you must search the monikin
annals for evidence. There it is to be found with an infinity of curious
details; and I trust the time is not far distant, when I shall have
great pleasure in pointing out to you some of the most approved chapters
of our best writers on this subject. But we are not confined to the
testimony of history, in establishing our condition to be of the
secondary formation. The internal evidence is triumphant; we appeal
to our simplicity, our philosophy, the state of the arts among us, in
short, to all those concurrent proofs which are dependent on the
highest possible state of civilization. In addition to this, we have the
infallible testimony which is to be derived from the development of our
tails. Our system of caudology is, in itself, a triumphant proof of the
high improvement of the monikin reason."

"Do I comprehend you aright, Dr. Reasono, when I understand your
system of caudology, or tailology, to render it into the vernacular,
to dogmatize on the possibility that the seat of reason in man, which
to-day is certainly in his brains, can ever descend into a tail?"

"If you deem development, improvement and simplification a descent,
beyond a question, sir. But your figure is a bad one, Sir John; for
ocular demonstration is before you, that a monikin can carry his tail as
high as a man can possibly carry his head