pig and feed the rabbits and hear the dormouse asleep."

So their pinafores were taken off and they all went to the Zoological
Gardens, where twenty of them could ride at a time on the guinea pig,
and where even the little ones could feed the great rabbits if some
grown-up person were kind enough to lift them up for the purpose.

There always was some such person, because in Rotundia everybody was
kind--except one.

Now that you have read as far as this you know, of course, that the
Kingdom of Rotundia was a very remarkable place; and if you are a
thoughtful child--as of course you are--you will not need me to tell you
what was the most remarkable thing about it. But in case you are not a
thoughtful child--and it is just possible of course that you are not--I
will tell you at once what that most remarkable thing was. _All the
animals were the wrong sizes!_ And this was how it happened.

In old, old, olden times, when all our world was just loose earth and
air and fire and water mixed up anyhow like a pudding, and spinning
around like mad trying to get the different things to settle into their
proper places, a round piece of earth got loose and went spinning away
by itself across the water, which was just beginning to try to get
spread out smooth into a real sea. And as the great round piece of earth
flew away, going around and around as hard as it could, it met a long
piece of hard rock that had got loose from another part of the puddingy
mixture, and the rock was so hard, and was going so fast, that it ran
its point through the round piece of earth and stuck out on the other
side of it, so that the two together were like a very-very-much-too-big
spinning top.

I am afraid all this is very dull, but you know geography is never quite
lively, and after all, I must give you a little information even in a
fairy tale--like the powder in jam.

Well, when the pointed rock smashed into the round bit of earth the
shock was so great that it set them spinning together through the
air--which was just getting into its proper place, like all the rest of
the things--only, as luck would have it, they forgot which way around
they had been going, and began to spin around the wrong way. Presently
Center of Gravity--a great giant who was managing the whole
business--woke up in the middle of the earth and began to grumble.

"Hurry up," he said. "Come down and lie still, can't you?"

So the rock with the round piece of earth fell i