perpetuate their names and honor themselves by this sort of connection
with their discoveries.
Now Professor Field-Mouse having placed his sensitive ear to the tree,
detected a rich, harmonious sound issuing from it. This surprising thing
was tested and enjoyed by each scholar in turn, and great was the
gladness and astonishment of all. Professor Woodlouse was requested to
add to and extend the tree’s name so as to make it suggest the musical
quality it possessed–which he did, furnishing the addition Anthem
Singer, done into the Mastodon tongue.
By this time Professor Snail was making some telescopic inspections.
He discovered a great number of these trees, extending in a single rank,
with wide intervals between, as far as his instrument would carry, both
southward and northward. He also presently discovered that all these
trees were bound together, near their tops, by fourteen great ropes, one
above another, which ropes were continuous, from tree to tree, as far as
his vision could reach. This was surprising. Chief Engineer Spider ran
aloft and soon reported that these ropes were simply a web hung thereby
some colossal member of his own species, for he could see its prey
dangling here and there from the strands, in the shape of mighty shreds
and rags that had a woven look about their texture and were no doubt the
discarded skins of prodigious insects which had been caught and eaten.
And then he ran along one of the ropes to make a closer inspection, but
felt a smart sudden burn on the soles of his feet, accompanied by a
paralyzing shock, wherefore he let go and swung himself to the earth by a
thread of his own spinning, and advised all to hurry at once to camp,
lest the monster should appear and get as much interested in the savants
as they were in him and his works. So they departed with speed, making
notes about the gigantic web as they went. And that evening the
naturalist of the expedition built a beautiful model of the colossal
spider, having no need to see it in order to do this, because he had
picked up a fragment of its vertebra by the tree, and so knew exactly
what the creature looked like and what its habits and its preferences
were by this simple evidence alone. He built it with a tail, teeth,
fourteen legs, and a snout, and said it ate grass, cattle, pebbles, and
dirt with equal enthusiasm. This animal was regarded as a very precious
addition to science. It was hoped a dead one might be found to stuff.
Professor Woodlouse thought that he and his brother scholars, by lying
hid and being quiet, might maybe catch a live one. He was advised to try
it. Which was all the attention that was paid to his suggestion. The
conference ended with the naming the monster after the naturalist, since
he, after God, had created it.
“And improved it, mayhap,” muttered the Tumble-Bug, who was intruding
again, according to his idle custom and his unappeasable curiosity.
END OF PART FIRST
SOME LEARNED FABLES FOR GOOD OLD BOYS AND GIRLS
PART SECOND
HOW THE ANIMALS OF THE WOOD COMPLETED THEIR SCIENTIFIC LABORS
A week later the expedition camped in the midst of a collection of
wonderful curiosities. These were a sort of vast caverns of stone that
rose singly and in bunches out of the plain by the side of the river
which they had first seen when they emerged from the forest. These
caverns stood in long, straight rows on opposite sides of broad aisles
that were bordered with single ranks of trees. The summit of each cavern
sloped sharply both ways. Several horizontal rows of great square holes,
obstructed by a thin, shiny, transparent substance, pierced the frontage
of each cavern. Inside were caverns within caverns; and one might ascend
and visit these minor compartments by means of curious winding ways
consisting of continuous regular terraces raised one above another.
There were many huge, shapeless objects in each compartment which were
considered to have been living creatures at one time, though now the thin
brown skin was shrunken and loose, and rattled when disturbed. Spiders