M. Hollydorf after morning salutation mustered his assistants for the inauguration of the legitimate duties entailed by his commission; as he had become fully impressed with the necessity of “working up” a sufficient number of experimental proofs for the basis of a preliminary despatch of intention. Selecting a retired portion of the latifundium for his field of operations they commenced their labors in good earnest. Of all the civilized nations of the world, we can claim for the Germans a just pre?minence in those departments of science devoted to the investigations of the habits and associations of insect life. In truth, the enthusiasm shown for insect explorations has extended itself to every department of their national existence; from the palace to the cabin particular attention is devoted to hunting, impaling, and preserving their cadavers, arranged in order, genera, and species, in mausoleum cabinets for mummified exhibition as shrines for the enraptured gaze of Teutonic devotees. Even the medi?val Gael of the Scottish Highlands never possessed, in living endowment, an attritive iota of the associate luxurious zest imparted from their joint stock investments, or the Egyptian, of yore, in his necropolitan collections, a source of such vain-glorious gratification.

M. Hollydorf’s first day’s investigations were rewarded with the discovery of old species, familiar to his eye, under new and strange combinations, affording conclusive evidence of exotic transfusion in propagation 117at some remote period. In semi-meditation, with a disinclination for food and midday rest, he continued his preparatory investigations while his assistants refreshed themselves with their accustomed rations and siesta. Availing themselves of his invitation and leisure, the pr?tor, Correliana, Mr. Welson, and Dow made their appearance. Apologizing for interrupting his studies, Correliana requested the privilege of subjecting a flower from her garden to the magnifying power of the tympano-microscope? Assuring him, with its presentation, that she felt certain, from its extreme beauty and purity of fragrance, that it would attract a high order of animalculan existence capable of appreciating its rare combinations. After a close examination with his unaided eyes, he declared it to be of an unknown species and as peculiar in its rare beauty, novelty of its perfume, and delicate pungency of its impression, as the Heraclean representatives of woman kind were superior and distinct from their civilized genera in the purity of their habits and customs. With this combined pronunciamento of comparison as a vent to his enthusiastic admiration, he placed the flower in the field receptacle of the tympano-microscope for focal magnifying reflection of its parasitic habituary residents, for inspection and classification in substance and sound. With an exclamation of surprise, compounded of fear and amazement, he started back from the instrument exposing to view the petals and pistils peopled with a multitude of diminutive human beings, who were convulsed with sneezing spasms of laughter, which they tried in vain to suppress with expedients in common use by our kind. The tympanum in sound articulation reverberated their tiny cachinnations and sternutatory explosions with such comical effect, that the pr?tor and Correliana were compelled, notwithstanding all their efforts to avoid the impulsive sympathy of contagion, to join issue with this mirthful introduction 118of our savans to a kindred animalculan representation of our race. While equally subject to the uncontrollable spasms of mirthful laughter and dumb amazement, the spectators to this scene of apparent conjurement were held speechless.

The leader of the diminutive apparitions at length leaped lightly, as if propelled by a sneeze, upon the stage within the reflecting compass of the tympano-microscope. Then, after a few ineffectual attempts to regain his composure, he finally succeeded in obtaining sufficient control to offer the following apologetic address, which gradually recalled us to our senses; but not in sufficient degree for a realization of their actual existence as human beings, free from the magic attaint of fears conjured from superstitious instinct. He thrice repeated to attract our attention from the stupor of amazement: “Men of science, and deliverers of the Heracleans, our protogean affinities!” Our partial attention secured, he continued. “If through the disability of our Dosch, or chief advisor, our selection as Manatitlan ambassadors to welcome you, in our people’s behalf as the preservers of our co-affinities in affection, should prove a source of discredit from our undignified appearance on presentment, it would prove a source of lasting sorrow. But we feel certain that you will extend to us the favor of believing that we are not inclined to untimely mirth, notwithstanding the example we have given to the contrary. With the concerted desire to impress you at a suitable moment with the reality of our existence as a race, Mistress Correliana probably forgot the keen sensitiveness of our schneiderian membranes to pungent odors, and with the intention of giving as much eclat as possible to our introduction, selected from her garden the most beautiful and fragrant flower of its parterres. The novelty of our emprise withheld our attention from the flower until it was placed in your hand for examination, then too late 119to effect an exchange, we braced ourselves to resist its effects. Hence our humiliating condition when exposed to your view and hearing! Thrown off our guard by the transformation effected in our size and sound of our voices, and above all by the consternation manifested in the expression of your faces, we could not resist the impulse of our naturally mirthful dispositions. That the infection should reach and overpower the more staid humor of our cousins, you will not wonder, when you recall your own and our disordered extremes. If you will control your perturbed emotions for a moment’s reflection you will be able to realize the irresistible nature of our impressions under these combined effects. Withal, when our existence and presence in auramentation becomes familiar as a recognized reality, you will find in our joyous dispositions a ready explanation for these ante phases of our first personal introduction.”

Upon this hint, Correliana conquered sufficient composure to introduce the speaker as Manito, the Pr?tor of Manicul?, the chief city of Manatitla. Then with the accompaniment of a spasmodic inclination to sneeze, as they leaned over the serrated edges of the petals, the tribunes were introduced individually by name. This process was lengthened by occasional suppressed tendencies to mirthful outbreaks, which gave M. Hollydorf and his companions an opportunity for partial recovery from their dazed state of amazement. When sufficiently restored for intelligent comprehension, the flower was changed for one of less pungent odor, and Manito from the rostrum point of a petal continued his address.

“From our diminutive size we willingly subscribe to the designation your nomenclature bestows upon insect animalities which are but partially visible to your unaided eyes. Still we do not disdain our size, for with the Manatitlans it has received the compensating privilege of a perception that enabled them to 120distinguish the evident object of mankind’s intelligent endowment above the instincts of associate animality.

“Like individuals of your race, ours vary in size. Some among the Manatitlans have reached in stature a height approximating in a remote degree to your well formed dwarfs of a standard monstrosity in the diminutive extreme sufficient for the excitement of wondering surprise. Our own divisions are expressed in terms rating from the smallest in stature, which are called tits; these form the masses, but with a sensible diminution in numbers from an upward tendency to the second degree of elevation from the majority. The middle class are styled mediums. With every generation this grade has been increased in proportion with the decrease of the tits, and ranks in status with your “well to do” money grade of merchants and speculators. The giantesco enjoys the highest statutory standing in the ranks of size, representing your titled duke commanders, and subalterns of lordly and knightly degree. But these distinctions are only perceptible to the eye, and in no way arbitrary in the assumption of prerogative stature rights above those below. As our scholastic term of education commences with the infant at the age of two years: the first stage that directs and controls the infantile perceptions and cravings of instinct is styled pupillage, and is under the supervision of the censor and nurse, who hold the instinctive exaggerations of parental fondness in check from birth. This habilitative stage of matriculation is the most trying for direction, as upon it depends the matriculant’s after power of self-control. The second stage of nonage commences at seven, when the self-devising perceptions begin to expand into individuality, that require educated direction, and leading encouragement. At fourteen, or the pubertal stage, the first indications appear for the premonitory inauguration of status rank established for the distinctions of size. 121The initiatory discipline of the scholar entering upon his senior term, induces the tractor disposition of the censorial advisor, in association with his juniors; in place of your form system of “bullying” the nether “fag,” whose weakness makes submission a virtue, when subject to the classical distinctions of arbitrary power. The seniors become assistant tutors to the censors and teachers from the age of fourteen until the close of their twenty-third year, when they graduate; and after a probationary term of three months’ “courtship,” with the connubial censors’ selection of affiances, are married. This cursory glance will serve for an introductory insight into our natural system of education designed for the direction of our immortal endowment in perceptive flight above the body’s ephemeral gratification of instinctive desire.

“Of other matters, pertaining to our actual realization of an enduring happiness, you will be advised by our advisors; as our interview was designed solely for your recognition and realization of our existence as a race in diminuendo alliance with your own. Our associations with your race are of a privileged description, which from the concentrated acuteness of our sensitive perceptions, enables us to divine your thoughts by auramental espionage. If you will give a moment’s investigation to the impressions of thought, when free from the turmoil of suspicious doubts, which now assail and render your efforts for reasonable perception void, you will find that they are all distinctly enunciated in the thalmus auditorium, which is the focal centre for maturing sensorial observations. Our size, and practical knowledge of the sensitive departments of your ears, enables our giantescoes to gain the aural sinus without provoking titillation, and its proximity to the vibrating portal, or vellum auditorium, permits our sensitive perceptions of sound to realize your thought articulations 122before they are matured for retentive comparison, or the vocalized utterances of speech communication. So that in reality, we hold the gigas (the name word we use for the designation of your race in contradistinction to our own) subject to our direction, when free from the ruling habits of instinctive indulgence, which defy control. As the previous knowledge of our advisers has preferred you to their confidence, I will state that our means of direction are through thought substitution, which the giantesco is able to modulate with ventriloquial variations of voice for the receptive nullification of those derived from their own sensoriums. Of course, the effects vary with the intensity of the subject’s command over his own sensorium, and the absorbing influence of educated impressions imparted from habits and customs. As an example, I will now state that M. Hollydorf, in his turmoil of doubts, feels tha............