Nothing is to be depended on but the great hippopotamus test . If you have a hippopotamus major in your brain , you are no ape , though you had four hands , no feet , and were more apish than the apes of all aperies . But if a hippopotamus major is ever discovered in one single ape 's brain , nothing will save your great-great-great-great - great-great-great-great-great-great-great-greater-greatest - grandmother from having been an ape too . No , my dear little man ; always remember that the one true , certain , final , and all - important difference between you and an ape is , that you have a hippopotamus major in your brain , and it has none ; and that , therefore , to discover one in its brain will be a very wrong and dangerous thing , at which every one will be very much shocked , as we may suppose they were at the professor . -- Though really , after all , it do n't much matter ; because -- as Lord Dundreary and others would put it -- nobody but men have hippopotamuses in their brains ; so , if a hippopotamus was discovered in an ape 's brain , why it would not be one , you know , but something else . But the professor had gone , I am sorry to say , even further than that ; for he had read at the British Association at Melbourne , Australia , in the year 1999 , a paper which assured every one who found himself the better or wiser for the news , that there were not , never had been , and could not be , any rational or half - rational beings except men , anywhere , anywhen , or anyhow ; that nymphs , satyrs , fauns , inui , dwarfs , trolls , elves , gnomes , fairies , brownies , nixes , wills , kobolds , leprechaunes , cluricaunes , banshees , will-o ' - the-wisps , follets , lutins , magots , goblins , afrits , marids , jinns , ghouls , peris , deevs , angels , archangels , imps , bogies , or worse , were nothing at all , and pure bosh and wind . And he had to get up very early in the morning to prove that , and to eat his breakfast overnight ; but he did it , at least to his own satisfaction . Whereon a certain great divine , and a very clever divine was he , called him a regular Sadducee ; and probably he was quite right . Whereon the professor , in return , called him a regular Pharisee ; and probably he was quite right too . But they did not quarrel in the least ; for , when men are men of the world , hard words run off them like water off a duck 's back . So the professor and the divine met at dinner that evening , and sat together on the sofa afterwards for an hour , and talked over the state of female labour on the antarctic continent -LRB- for nobody talks shop after his claret -RRB- , and each vowed that the other was the best company he ever met in his life . What an advantage it is to be men of the world ! From all which you may guess that the professor was not the least of little Ellie 's opinion . So he gave her a succinct compendium of his famous paper at the British Association , in a form suited for the youthful mind . But , as we have gone over his arguments against water-babies once already , which is once too often , we will not repeat them here . Now little Ellie was , I suppose , a stupid little girl ; for , instead of being convinced by Professor Ptthmllnsprts ' arguments , she only asked the same question over again . `` But why are there not water-babies ? '' I trust and hope that it was because the professor trod at that moment on the edge of a very sharp mussel , and hurt one of his corns sadly , that he answered quite sharply , forgetting that he was a scientific man , and therefore ought to have known that he could n't know ; and that he was a logician , and therefore ought to have known that he could not prove a universal negative -- I say , I trust and hope it was because the mussel hurt his corn , that the professor answered quite sharply : `` Because there ai n't . '' Which was not even good English , my dear little boy ; for , as you must know from Aunt Agitate 's Arguments , the professor ought to have said , if he was so angry as to say anything of the kind -- Because there are not : or are none : or are none of them ; or -LRB- if he had been reading Aunt Agitate too -RRB- because they do not exist . And he groped with his net under the weeds so violently , that , as it befell , he caught poor little Tom .
He felt the net very heavy ; and lifted it out quickly , with XXXXX all entangled in the meshes .
Ptthmllnsprts Tom deevs evening inui jinns kobolds logician mussel right