With whales and bats we shall no longer be classed!--if your old friend can possibly help it; and he is not a little confident of his powers to do so; for he believes he can demonstrate that there is not a greater difference between the form, size and habits of the bats and whales themselves, than he can point out between the manners, customs, pursuits, and bodily and mental endowments of the different orders of mankind; and, therefore, _ex necessitate rei_, there should be a classification different from any yet made. The honor of this discovery, I here beg you to witness, that I claim for myself. Before I proceed farther, I will respectfully suggest a new definition of man himself; as all heretofore attempted have been found defective. The Greeks, for example, called him "Anthropos"--an animal that turns his eyes upwards; forgetting (as it would seem) that all domestic fowls, especially turkeys, ducks and geese, frequently do the same thing; although it must be admitted, that the act in them is always accompanied by a certain twist of the head, such as man himself generally practices when he means to look particularly astute. One of their greatest philosophers--the illustrious Plato--perceiving the incorrectness of this definition, attempted another, and defined man to be "a two legged animal without feathers:" but this very inadequate description was soon "blown sky high" by the old cynic Diogenes, who, having picked a cock quite clean of his plumage, threw him into Plato's school, crying out at the same time, "Behold Plato's man!" True, this is an old story; but none the worse for that. This was such "a settler,"--to borrow a pugilistic term--as completely to discourage, for a long time, all farther attempts to succeed in this very difficult task; nor indeed, do I recollect, from that day to the present, any now worth mentioning. "_The grand march of mind_," however, has become of late years, so astoundingly rapid, and so many things heretofore pronounced to be _unknowable_, have been made as plain as the nose on our faces, that Man himself--the great discoverer of all these wonders, should no longer be suffered (if his own powers can prevent it) to be consorted, as he has so long been, with a class of living beings so vastly inferior to himself. To rescue him therefore from _this_ degradation, shall be my humble task, since it is one of those attempts wherein--even to fail--must acquire some small share of glory.