After a failed attempt to read easy literature in bed I picked up Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection from 1859. It is a groundbreaking work, no doubt, but it’s also hilarous. Here’s a taste that almost made me wet my bed. It’s from the first chapter entitled Variation under Domestication.
Not a single domestic animal can be found which has not in some country drooping ears; and the view suggested by some authors, that the drooping is due to the disuse of the muscle of the ear, from the animals not being much alarmed by danger, seems probable.
Brilliant! It’s my favourite sentence so far this year.