ention to the moral
and social condition of these interesting animals, he had been induced to
visit an exhibition in Regent-street, London, commonly known by the
designation of "The Industrious Fleas." He had there seen many fleas,
occupied certainly in various pursuits and avocations, but occupied, he
was bound to add, in a manner which no man of well-regulated mind could
fail to regard with sorrow and regret. One flea, reduced to the level of
a beast of burden, was drawing about a miniature gig, containing a
particularly small effigy of His Grace the Duke of Wellington; while
another was staggering beneath the weight of a golden model of his great
adversary Napoleon Bonaparte. Some, brought up as mountebanks and
ballet-dancers, were performing a figure-dance (he regretted to observe,
that, of the fleas so employed, several were females); others were in
training, in a small card-board box, for pedestrians,--mere sporting
characters--and two were actually engaged in the cold-blooded and
barbarous occupation of duelling; a pursuit from which humanity recoiled
with horror and disgust. He suggested that measures should be
immediately taken to employ the labour of these fleas as part and parcel
of the productive power of the country, which might easily be done by the
establishment among them of infant schools and houses of industry, in
which a system of virtuous education, based upon sound principles, should
be observed, and moral precepts strictly inculcated. He proposed that
every flea who presumed to exhibit, for hire, music, or dancing, or any
species of theatrical entertainment, without a licence, should be
considered a vagabond, and treated accordingly; in which respect he only
placed him upon a level with the rest of mankind. He would further
suggest that their labour should be placed under the control and
regulation of the state, who should set apart from the profits, a fund
for the support of superannuated or disabled fleas, their widows and
orphans. With this view, he proposed that liberal premiums should be
offered for the three best designs for a general almshouse; from
which--as insect architecture was well known to be in a very advanced and
perfect state--we might possibly derive many valuable hints for the
improvement of our metropolitan universities, national galleries, and
other public edifices.

'THE PRESIDENT wished to be informed how the ingenious gentleman proposed
to open a communication with fl