--"Is there anything still living and lurking in old black drains
of Thought,--any bigotry, any prejudice, anything in the moral world
whereunto the centipede may be likened?"
--"Really, I do not know," replied the friend to whom I had put the
question; "but you need only go as far as the vegetable world for a
likeness. Did you ever see anything like this?" he added, opening a
drawer and taking therefrom something revolting, which, as he pressed it
in his hand, looked like a long thick bundle of dried centipedes.
--"Touch them," he said, holding out to me the mass of articulated flat
bodies and bristling legs.
--"Not for anything!" I replied, in astonished disgust. He laughed, and
opened his hand. As he did so, the mass expanded.
--"Now look," he exclaimed!
Then I saw that all the bodies were united at the tails--grew together
upon one thick flat annulated stalk... a plant!--"But here is the
fruit," he continued, taking from the same drawer a beautifully embossed
ovoid nut, large as a duck's egg, ruddy-colored, and so exquisitely
varnished by nature as to resemble a rosewood carving fresh from the
hands of the cabinet-maker. In its proper place among the leaves and
branches, it had the appearance of something delicious being devoured
by a multitude of centipedes. Inside was a kernel, hard and heavy as
iron-wood; but this in time, I was told, falls into dust: though the
beautiful shell remains always perfect.