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Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 by Various
page 36 of 73 (49%)
rarely--with two Gills. The question whether the hook hurts them, or
only tickles till they squirm, is one of those knotty problems that
physiologists have failed to solve. COWPER, the poet, had a tenderness
for the earthworm. So also had IZAAK WALTON, who recommends that he be
skewered "tenderly, as if you loved him."

From the cradle to the grave, and even after we are deposited in the
latter, our bodies are liable to be infested with worms. There is the
trichina spiralis, which really exists, although the German
pork-butchers denounce the story as a "pig lie;" the ordinary intestinal
worm, which disports itself, eel-like, in the Alimentary Canal; and the
tape worm, of two varieties, one of which performs its circumlocutory
antics in the human stomach, and the other in the government Bureaux at
Washington. The worm that feeds on the cold meat of humanity, although
the most insignificant of reptiles, has one attribute of Diety. It is no
respecter of persons, and would as lief pick a bone in a royal vault as
in POTTER'S Field. All flesh is the same to it--unless saturated with
carbolic acid. It is said that all living things are propagated--that
the process of creation ceased ages ago; yet it is quite certain that
the worms known as maggots may be created by a blow. The most detestable
of all the vermicular tribe is the Worm of the Still, which is a sort of
caterer for the worm which never dieth--a reptile of another sphere,
that has never been described in Natural History. The only worm
recognized as edible by civilized man is produced in Italy and vulgarly
known as wormy-chilly. The subject is susceptible of further expansion,
but having run it into the ground, we here break it off.

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