Genre:

News-Commentary, Drollery

Subjects:

Transport, Nationalism, Animal Behaviour, Nationalism, Animal Behaviour

    Discusses a speech on the Suez Canal made by André M J J Dupin who, according to the Debat, claimed that England had tried to stop the engineering construction through 'envious' diplomacy and although the country had once 'frightened all the world' it was now 'frightened at everything'. In response, relates an anecdote of Georges Cuvier, who ironically accepted the definition of a crab as a 'red fish that goes backwards' with the slight reservations that crabs are neither red, nor fish, nor walk backwards. Punch similarly accepts Dupin's account of England, with the reservations that it 'is not envious, never desired to frighten the world, and is now not in the least frightened'.