And now, my dear little man, what should we learn from this parable¹?  
We should learn thirty-seven or thirty-nine things, I am not exactly sure which: but one thing, at least, we may learn, and that is this—when we see efts in the pond, never to throw stones at them, or catch them with crooked² pins, or put them into vivariums with sticklebacks, that the sticklebacks may prick³ them in their poor little stomachs, and make them jump out of the glass into somebody's work-box, and so come to a bad end. For these efts are nothing else but the water-babies who are stupid and dirty, and will not learn their lessons and keep themselves clean; and, therefore (as comparative anatomists will tell you fifty years hence, though they are not learned enough to tell you now), their skulls⁴ grow fat, their jaws⁵ grow out, and their brains grow small, and their tails grow long, and they lose all their ribs⁶ (which I am sure you would not like to do), and their skins grow dirty and spotted⁷, and they never get into the clear rivers, much less into the great wide sea, but hang about in dirty ponds, and live in the mud, and eat worms, as they deserve to do.
 
But that is no reason why you should ill-use them: but only why you should pity them and be kind to them, and hope that some day they will wake up, and be ashamed of their nasty, dirty, lazy, stupid life, and try to <............