Punch (51.1866)

September 6, 1866. J

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

Si9

THE PHILOSOPHERS OF NOTTINGHAM.

Fools say Philosophy tends but to ossify

Hearts, and teach people amusement to shun r
Stuff, and her worshippers mustn’t be cross if 1
Show her High Priesthood as figures of fun.
We've been to Nottingham, spotting 'em,potting 'em.
Sketching away with the patience of Job ;

Down in a picture you see we've been jotting 'em,
Each an Ethardo atop of his globe.

There’s the bold President: nothing irrelevant
Comes from that learned and thoughtful Q.C.,
Only you notice we’ve left out his Elephant
Growing a trunk from the trunk of a tree.
Something the President calls continuity
Furnishes Grove with his magical key;
Certain old writers, of some ingenuity,

• “ Didn’t know everything down in Judee.”

We've been to Nottingham, Sfc.

There’s the kind friend of adventurous travellers,
Roderick vich Mdrci-iison, ho, ieroe,
Secrets now known had had fewer unravellers.
But for the aid that induced them to go.

Here is a gentleman dancing in glory,

That’s Mr. Huxley a playing the bones,
Here stands before ye American Maury
Blowing the storms to appropriate zones.

We've been to Nottingham, fyc.

Here’s M r. Fairbairn ; how bombs in the air
burn,

And rifles hit hardest, his fate was to hear,

He knows better things, and in days when «e
dare burn

War’s gory stories, his name will be dear.

Fie who’d a flam say in presence of Ramsay,

A topper might get from that hammer of Thor ;
He’s read every stratum ’twixt Jedburgh and
Jhamsi,

And knows every hill from Mont Blanc to
Mam Tor.

And we've been to Nottingham, 8pc.

Mr. Crookes, for a frolic, dispenses Carbolic,
Drawn from the deepest of chemistry’s wells,
Until Mr. Odling, afraid of the colic,

Requests that his friend discontinue his smells.
O’er Europe and Asia the brave Mr. Glaisher
Glides calm, his balloon being charged with
Blue Mist,

While Tyndall, whose honours are safe from
erasure,

Rides the biggest, of teapots believed to exist.
And we've been to Nottingham, Sfc.

Binocular Brewster, how gallantly you stir
When aught’s to be done for obtaining “ More
Light,”

Fame reads out your name by its own brilliant
lustre,

Nor needs those large glasses in aid of her sight.
And what is t his last apparition so splendid 1
’Tis Huggins the starry, who’s perched on
the sun :

With which blaze of glory our triumph is ended —
Now say if Philosophy isn’t good fun?

For we've been to Nottingham, Sfc.

I

AN INSECTIVOROUS TRIBE.

Servants, in London and its suburbs, have often much to complain
of the black beetles which infest kitchens, and, let masters and mis-
tresses bear in mind, larders also. To get rid of these coleopterous
nuisances, many housekeepers are wont to engage a hedgehog, in
addition to their domestics. Now, sometimes these object to the com-
pany of their prickly companion. The subjoined extract from a leading
article in the Baity Telegraph indicates a possibility of exterminating
black beetles, cockroaches, and any other such intruders into our
abodes by the simple aid of servants who are themselves insectivorous :—

Mr. Poston, ihe agent of the United States Minister of the Interior, tells us
that, having been requested by the Smithsonian Institute at Washington to collect
for scientific purposes all the bats, snakes, insects, rats, rabbits, birds, beetles,
fish, grasshoppers, and horned frogs in Arizona, he found, on arriving there, that
none of those animals were left, the Indians having converted them all into
foo.i.”

And we call these people savages !—so far in advance as they are, oi
the consumers of shrimps,, prawns, and turtle, in utilising esculent
forms of reptile life, and other inferior organisations. It is true that
they had been deprived of better sustenance than the horned frogs, and
the other things above enumerated, by the failure of the customary
fertilising inundation of the Colorado River, but there can be no doubt
that they ate their snakes with all the appetite that a serpent can be
devoured with by a mungoose. If some of these Arizona Indians could
be imported into this country, and put into livery (which would become
them), they might be employed down-stairs in the twolold capacity of
footman and hedgehog. And when they had eaten up all the beetles,
and rats and mice, then they might be turned into the garden to destroy
the slugs and snails, and worms, and woodbobs, and the like. Only
they would have to be told to let the toads and frogs alone, because
these creatures are not only harmless but useful; lor they kill flies,
and in Paris toads are now fetching a high price, being sold to be put
into cucumber and melon frames for that purpose.