lating animal." Surely, so he is, unless he be a spendthrift; but
he still shares his quality with others; for the squirrel hoards his
nuts, the aunt lays in her barley-corns, the moon knoweth her seasons,
and the sun his going down: moreover, Chinese slates, multiplying
rulers, and, as their aggregated wisdom, Babbage's machine, will stoutly
contest so mechanical a fancy. Savoury steams, and those too smelling
strongly of truth, assault the nostrils, as a Vitellite--what a name of
hungry omen for the imperial devourer!--plausibly insinuates man to be
"a cooking animal." Who can gainsay it? and wherewithal, but with
domesticated monkeys, does he share this happy attribute? It is true,
the butcher-bird spits his prey on a thorn, the slow epicurean boa
glazes his mashed antelope, the king of vultures quietly waits for a
gamey taste and the rapid roasting of the tropics: but all this care,
all this caloric, cannot be accounted culinary, and without a question,
the kitchen _is_ a sphere where the lord of creation reigns supreme:
still, thou best of practical philosophers, caterer for daily
dinners--man--MAN, I say, is not altogether a compact of edible
commons, a Falstaff pudding-bag robbed of his seasoning wit, a mere
congeries of food and pickles; moreover, honest Gingel of "fair" fame
hath (or used to have, "in my warm youth, when George the Third was
king,") automatons, [pray, observe, Sosii, I am not pedant or wiseacre
enough to indite _automata_; we conquering Britons stole that word among
many others from poor dead Greece, who couldn't want it; having made it
ours in the singular, why be bashful about the plural! So also of
memorandums, omnibuses, [you remember Farren's _omni_BI!]
necropolises, gymnasiums, eukeirogeneions, and other unlegacied
property of dear departed Rome and Greece. All this, as you see,
is clearly parenthetical;] well, then, Gingel has automatons, that will
serve you up all kinds of delicate viands, pleasant meats, and
choice cates by clock-work, to say nothing of Jones' patent
all-in-a-moment-any-thing-whatsoever cooking apparatus: no mine
Apiciite, Heliogabalite, Sardanapalite, Seftonite, Udite, thou of
extravagant ancestry and indifferent digestion; little, indeed, as you
may credit me, man is not all stomach, nor altogether formed alone for
feeding. Remember AEsop's parable, the belly and the members; and, above
them all, do not overlook the head.

What think you then of "a featherless biped?