'Half of Oxford is sending me tedious lists. My – our – task is to organize them – to draw up a table of every type of bird and beast in the world. I have entabulated the animals troublesome to other animals – the louse, the flea. Those designed for further transmutation – the caterpillar, the maggot. One-horned sheathed winged insects. Testaceous turbinated exanguious animals – and before you ask, I have subdivided them into those with, and without, spiral convolutions. Squamous river fish, phytivorous birds of long wings, rapacious beasts of the cat-kind – anyway, as I drew up all of these lists and tables, it occurred to me that (going back to Genesis, sixth chapter, verses fifteen through twenty-two) Noah must have found a way to fit all of these creatures into one gopher-wood tub three hundred cubits long! I became concerned that certain Continental savants, of an atheistical bent, might misuse my list to suggest that the events related in Genesis could not have happened – '