peevish. But my thoughts were diverted
from outward events to myself, and I was
then greatly astonished at the transformation
I had undergone. My stature was lofty and
majestic— absolutely visible to the naked eye.
I was lively and active, with a complete
green suit of something like network, from
each mesh of which there started a moveable
bristle, which served me both for oars and
for fingers and toes, at will. When cruising
freely through the water, my shape was like
that of a peg-top which has lost its peg; but
I could purse myself up suddenly into a
globular shell— that is, a globe with nothing
inside it— or could rest on my toe and spread
my full-blown charms into a living cornucopiæ.
In truth, I could put myself into a
variety of shapes, and have been
complimented with the epithet of Polymorphus by
an enthusiast, who actually describes me as
the most marvellous of Nature's handiwork; *
but the expanded display most
flattered my vanity, although, in consequence
of that distension, one old-fashioned admirer,
in his homely phrase, dubbed me a
funnel-animal. A subsequent promotion to the title
of Stentor was some recompense for this
slighting term. Although empty, I was no
braggart; although hollow, I was not insincere.
I never told a falsehood during that
epoch of my life; for, albeit a Stentor, I was
utterly dumb, and resembled a trumpet only
in shape. Excessive sensibility and fastidiousness
formed the leading feature of my character
and eventually brought about my dissolution.
I was slowly circling round a stem of starwort,
when I came across a slight current, or
whiff, of some saline or ammoniacal solution.
The mere momentary contact of defilement
was enough. My feelings were wounded to
the quick. I shot off and rejected, bit by bit,
a considerable portion of my verdant person;
and each fragment, as soon as dismissed,
swam away to transact its own private
business, by the aid of the vibrating bristle that
was attached to it. When I was semi-disfigured
and only half myself, I thought I
might just as well be no more altogether; so
I dissolved the remaining members of my
own proper parliament, and became a reckless suicide,
self-scattered to the waves. Life
was not worth preserving after I had once
lost stentorian caste. I preferred death to
commixture with things unclean.

* "À la vue simple, c'est un point vert très-agile; sous
le microscope, il prend, en très-peu d'instants, des formes
si nombreuses et si variées, que la plume ni les mots no
pourraient en rondre compte. De toutes les merveilles
de la nature qu'il m'a été donné de voir (excepté la
Vorticella multiformis et le Vibrio paxilliter), celle-ci est
certainement la plus admirable: c'est le suprême artifice
de la nature, qui frappe d'étonnement l'esprit et qui
fatigue I'oeil."— MULLER

My being was transferred to a new
existence. I was now a worm, a transparent
eel-like Anguilla tritici, with a strong family
resemblance to those that live in vinegar.
Hatched in the ground from infected
seed-wheat, I grew with the young plant, and
rose with its stem. There were multitudes
of us, all with an ambitious turn of mind;
our sole object in life was to mount, which
we did, till we reached the summit of our
wishes— the flowering ear of corn. We
penetrated the germ, and there we lay, provided
for; our fortune was made; with plenty of
company, and nothing to do, but to wriggle,
and twine, and gossip amongst ourselves. It
was a comfortable sort of club-life, though
somewhat monotonous. The harvest came,
and we were safe in our kernel. The farmer
sold his crop to a London corn-merchant,
who stored it in a granary in the City until
prices should rise. But whether they rose or
fell, mattered little to us, for our own club-house,
the grain of wheat— our exclusive Anguillæum
to which no strangers were admissible— fell
into a cranny in the floor; and there we lay
snug, year after year, waking up a little to
hear the news when we were moister than
usual, and going to sleep again when we
became too dry. Dog-days and frost were
alike to us; the woe and the weal of nations
moved us not; and we might have lain there
from that time till doomsday, had not the
Great Fire broke out and burnt us (and a
great many other noxious things besides) to
a cinder which is almost the only way of
getting rid of us.

I revived after an indefinite interval; the
sentence of transmigration was still upon me,
and a ditch was again my dwelling; but not
the same kind of ditch as before. It was a
clear little pool on an upland down. There
was a greater variety of aquatic plants, and
a greater multitude of moving creatures.
The scenery around me was really brilliant;
I was in the midst of a forest of cylindrical
crystal stems, each of which contained an
internal spire of brightest green winding round
its central axis. Up and down these crystal
stems, and also across them from stem to
stem, there ran and darted swarms of pretty
creatures searching for their food, like
tom-tits hunting after insects in the branches of
an apple-tree. In the water, as if in a
sea-green sky, were suspended constellations of
emerald crescents of different sizes and
different degrees of curvature; these lunulines
(as they have been prettily called), unlike the
moon, hung immoveable, except that where
there was daylight, thither they tended. But
the greatest change-was in myself. I was
transparent and perfectly symmetrical.
Fancy a swan made of flexible glass, with a
neck twice or thrice as long as the real bird's,
and you have a rough but faithful sketch of
my form. I was all activity; restless as a
bee in June, and ten times as inquisitive;
never was a Paul Pry to be compared to me;
into the thickets of weeds where my body
could not enter, I thrust my long neck up to
the shoulders. My head was adorned with
beautiful whiskers, or smellers, like a cat's,
only they were much more numerous and
more sensitive. By the aid of these I smelt