females); others were in training, in a small card-board box, for
pedestrians,--mere sporting characters--and two were actually
engaged in the cold-blooded and barbarous occupation of duelling; a
pursuit from which humanity recoiled with horror and disgust. He
suggested that measures should be immediately taken to employ the
labour of these fleas as part and parcel of the productive power of
the country, which might easily be done by the establishment among
them of infant schools and houses of industry, in which a system of
virtuous education, based upon sound principles, should be
observed, and moral precepts strictly inculcated. He proposed that
every flea who presumed to exhibit, for hire, music, or dancing, or
any species of theatrical entertainment, without a licence, should
be considered a vagabond, and treated accordingly; in which respect
he only placed him upon a level with the rest of mankind. He would
further suggest that their labour should be placed under the
control and regulation of the state, who should set apart from the
profits, a fund for the support of superannuated or disabled fleas,
their widows and orphans. With this view, he proposed that liberal
premiums should be offered for the three best designs for a general
almshouse; from which--as insect architecture was well known to be
in a very advanced and perfect state--we might possibly derive many
valuable hints for the improvement of our metropolitan
universities, national galleries, and other public edifices.

'THE PRESIDENT wished to be informed how the ingenious gentleman
proposed to open a communication with fleas generally, in the first
instance, so that they might be thoroughly imbued with a sense of
the advantages they must necessarily derive from changing their
mode of life, and applying themselves to honest labour. This
appeared to him, the only difficulty.