IS SCIENCE PLAYED OUT?

["In a grain of butter you have 47,250,000 microbes. When you eat a slice of bread-and-butter, you therefore must swallow as many microbes as there are people in Europe."—"Science Notes" in Daily Chronicle.]

Charlotte, eating bread-and-butter,

Read this Note with horror utter,

And (assisted by the cutter)

Went on eating bread-and-butter!

Man will say—with due apology

To alarmed Bacteriology—

Spite of menacing bacilli,

Man must eat, friend, willy-nilly!

And where shall he find due foison

If e'en bread-and-butter's poison?

Science told our amorous Misses

Death may be conveyed in kisses;

But it did not keep the nation

From promiscuous osculation.

Now it warneth the "Young Person"

(Whom Grant Allen voids his curse on)

"Bread-and-butter Misses" even

In their food may find death's leaven!

Never mind how this is made out!

Science—as a Bogey's—played out.

Spite all warnings it may utter,

Women will have Bread-and-Butter!