Mr. Bensington proposed originally to try this stuff, so soon as he was
really able to prepare it, upon tadpoles. One always does try this sort
of thing upon tadpoles to begin with; this being what tadpoles are for.
And it was agreed that he should conduct the experiments and not
Redwood, because Redwood's laboratory was occupied with the ballistic
apparatus and animals necessary for an investigation into the Diurnal
Variation in the Butting Frequency of the Young Bull Calf, an
investigation that was yielding curves of an abnormal and very
perplexing sort, and the presence of glass globes of tadpoles was
extremely undesirable while this particular research was in progress.

But when Mr. Bensington conveyed to his cousin Jane something of what he
had in mind, she put a prompt veto upon the importation of any
considerable number of tadpoles, or any such experimental creatures,
into their flat. She had no objection whatever to his use of one of the
rooms of the flat for the purposes of a non-explosive chemistry that, so
far as she was concerned, came to nothing; she let him have a gas
furnace and a sink and a dust-tight cupboard of refuge from the weekly
storm of cleaning she would not forego. And having known people addicted
to drink, she regarded his solicitude for distinction in learned
societies as an excellent substitute for the coarser form of depravity.
But any sort of living things in quantity, "wriggly" as they were bound
to be alive and "smelly" dead, she could not and would not abide. She
said these things were certain to be unhealthy, and Bensington was
notoriously a delicate man--it was nonsense to say he wasn't. And when
Bensington tried to make the enormous importance of this possible
discovery clear, she said that it was all very well, but if she
consented to his making everything nasty and unwholesome in the place
(and that was what it all came to) then she was certain he would be the