172 Naturalist at Large 



to what the soft parts of those fossil animals were like. 

 That spirula disappeared about forty-five years ago from 

 the very desk at which I now sit writing these lines and it 

 has never been seen from that day to this. 



Mr. Alexander Agassiz always said that Professor E. D. 

 Cope was the greatest thief in the world, for the reason 

 that he stole the largest object ever stolen. The story ran 

 something like this: Captain Atwood of Provincetown, 

 who did the Museum many good turns, once notified Mr. 

 Agassiz that a strange whale had drifted ashore on the 

 Outer Cape. Mr. Agassiz asked J. A. Allen and some stu- 

 dents to go down and rough out the skeleton. This they 

 did, and laid out the partially cleaned bones on a flatcar. 

 They little dreamed that Dr. Cope from Philadelphia also 

 had a scout on the Outer Cape, and Cope was a canny man. 

 He went to Provincetown, hired a room in a farmhouse, 

 where he could watch proceedings, and waited until the 

 Cambridge crew went home. Then he greased the palm 

 of the station agent to the end that a Philadelphia waybill 

 instead of a Cambridge waybill was afHxed to the flatcar 

 and the whale ended up as the type of a new species which 

 Mr. Cope described, its skeleton still being preserved at 

 the Academy of Natural Sciences in Pliiladelphia. So the 

 story runs, and I have often heard it told in the past. 



I can hear the reader mildly say, "Why on earth does 

 anyone want to be a museum curator?" This question, 

 however, I can answer bravely and with positive assur- 

 ance. To one who has by inheritance or training acquired 

 the pack-rat instinct it is the most exciting calling in the 

 whole world. For who, having a spark of imagination. 



