come. But I venture to write again. One, be- 

 cause the post here has become very slack. Only 

 last month iny cousin Motilal nine years senior 

 in Posts and Telegraph got the sudden sack 

 and was substituted by an inexperienced person. 

 Oh, Sir, these days are hard for us. Your 

 eagerly expected letter may have come and got 

 lost. I have now you see moved. 



Two, because I hear that in a little paper a 

 man Solem asks news of the worm. Sir, there is 

 now a rival and you should beat him. I am 

 always you know ready to help. I think the time 

 is good for the worm. There is much rain 

 and the great swamp is full. With your instruc- 

 tions we might get one. 



Believe me honoured Sir, 

 Your hopeful servant, 

 Purshottam S. Patel 



Next a letter came from Joseph Ngomo, who could no 

 longer help, but whose evident dedication to his students 

 should be a fine example of the new spirit of Africa. 



Dear Sir, 



P. O. Box 1432 



Gilgil, Kenya 



23 February 1967 



I thank you for your kind letter of 18 November 

 which has taken so long time to catch me up. 

 I can no longer be of help for you with the danc- 

 ing worm as I am transferred from Lokori and 

 will I hear soon be transferred also from here. 

 As a senior teacher I am moved about where 

 needed and moved on again when things 



Th(x«li dimisaiirs aiul Dinothcres 

 May long ago ha\« disappeared. 

 Despite tix'\oiunies rK>v\- innrint 

 Sonx" cn-atiires just d»>n't take thi' hint. 

 Tbtixtse who sav it cannot be 

 Tlx" DaiK iiicWtirni savsconieand see, 

 While in its nonx' with 'dance and pomp 

 h rules the vast Ayangyangi Swamp. 



m aioor iw am 



kSCh u.1. oi 



Above, "Christmas Greetings." 



This month's Cover shows old Kenya hand Bryan Patterson and 

 prey. He apparently bagged the little fellow tvith the shotgun in his 

 right hand. Hunter Patterson brought down several Field Mtiseum 

 staff members with the same shot. The Editor of the Bulletin feels 

 the Cover is appropriate for an issue published in April. 



are going well. 



Before I left Lokori Akai had gone as far as 

 was possible for him in the school. His family 

 has no money for further education and he is 

 with his father's goats again. This is sad 

 for a teacher but Akai knows more than his 

 father and his son will know more again and so 

 we build. Harambee! 



I am sorry your name was wrong in my letter 

 but so it was in the paper. This time you see 

 I use air letter. 



Yours faithfully, 

 Joseph N. Ngomo 



A most welcome visitor to Field Museum was able to 

 add a tiny bit of corroboration. Bryan Patterson, formerly 

 Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at Field Museum, and 

 now Agassiz Professor of the same at Harvard University, 

 stopped to see his former associates early last year. Patter- 

 son, who had been in Kenya recently on field work, which 

 resulted, incidentally, in some remarkable discoveries about 

 hominid evolution, knew of Patel's uncle, whom he consid- 

 ered something of a rascal. A witty and charming man, he 

 read the letters with delighted interest but he had never 

 heard of the Dancing Worm of Turkana. 



Professor Patterson had every reason to be delighted with 

 the letters, for they represented a job well done. There were 

 perhaps ten people in the Paleontology lab as he read the 

 letters, but only one man knew that the letters had sprung 

 from the same hand, their writers from a single brain, and 

 that the Worm inhabited not the Ayangyangi Swamp but a 

 similar habitat, the mind of Professor Bryan Patterson. 



The collective leg of Field Museum had been thoroughly 

 pulled. The hoax, admitted finally by a geologist in Pat- 

 terson's confidence, although not yet by the author himself, 

 was elaborate, satisfying and structurally magnificent. The 

 delicate weave of hint and doubt, of fact and myth, of virtue 

 and vice in the correspondents is convincing, but, in the 

 final analysis, Patterson's greatest ally was the human will 

 to believe. All of us wanted a Dancing Worm. We will 

 miss it. 



In fact, we will miss all of them — Colonel Cloudesley, 

 in the sunset of a distinguished military career; the acquisi- 

 tive Indian merchant, Mr. Patel; the devoted school teacher, 

 Joseph Ngomo, and bright little Akai, back with his father's 

 goats. But most of all, the Worm, who danced with waving 

 arms by moonlight in the depths of the swamp, who gave 

 milk, whose bite killed men. We mourn its passing. 



One final message closes out the file: A card came to 

 Gene Richardson last Christmas. On the cover was a photo 

 of a well-known Agassiz Professor of Paleontology looking 

 with obvious distaste at a Dancing Worm, which he has 

 clearly just bagged with the shotgun in his hand. Inside 

 the card, a short verse and a page headed "The End of The 

 Hunt" and signed by our old friends. 



The end of the hunt, yes. But not the end of the season. 

 It is now open season on Mr. Bryan Patterson. 



Page 6 APRIL 



