THE MUSEUM. 



183 



beauty of the business. Even if they 

 suspect an egg they do not hke to ex- 

 amine it too closely. It's such brittle 

 capital at the best. 



"You did not know that taxidermy 

 rose to bights like that. My boy, it 

 has risen higher. I have rivalled the 

 hands of Nature herself. One of the 

 geiuiinc great auks" — his voice fell to 

 a whisper — "one of the genuine great 

 auks xoas made by vie.'' 



"No. You must study ornithology, 

 and find out which it is yourself. And 

 what is more, I have been approached 

 by a syndicate of dealers to stock one 

 of the explored skerries to the north of 

 Iceland with specimens. I may — some 

 day. But I have another thing in hand 

 just now. Ever heard of dinornis.^ 



"It is one of those big birds recent- 

 ly extinct in New Zealand. 'Moa' is 

 its common name, so called because 

 extinct: there is no Moa now. See.'' 

 Well, they have got bones of it, and 

 from some of the marshes even feath- 

 ers and dried bits of skin. Now I am 

 going to — well, there is no need to 

 make any bones about it — going to 

 forge a complete stuffed Moa. I know 

 a chap out there who will pretend to 

 make the find in a kind of antiseptic 

 swamp, and say he stuffed it at once, 

 as it threatened to fall to pieces. The 

 feathers are peculiar, but I have got a 

 simply lovely way of dodging up 

 singed bits of ostrich plume. Yes that 

 is the new smell you noticed. They 

 can only discover the fraud with a 

 microscope, and they will hardly care 

 to pull a nice specimen to bits for 

 that. 



"In this way, you see, I give my 

 little push in the advancement of 

 science. 



"But all this is merely imitating 



Nature. I have done more than that 

 in my time. I have- — beaten her." 



He took his feet down from the 

 mantel-board, and leant over confiden- 

 tially towards me. "I have ereated 

 birds," he said in a low voice. ''New 

 birds. Improvements. Like no birds 

 that were ever seen before." 



He resumed his attitude during an 

 impressive silence. 



"Enrich the universe; rath-ev. 

 Some of the birds I made were new 

 kinds of humming-birds, and very 

 beautiful little things, but some of 

 them were simply rum. The rummest, 

 I think, was the Anomalopteryx Je- 

 juna Jejuiius-a-2iin- — empty — so called 

 because there was really nothing in it; 

 a thoroughly empty bird —except for 

 stuffing. Old Javvers has the thing 

 now. And I suppose he is almost as 

 proud of it as I am. It is a master- 

 piece Bellows. It has all the silly 

 clumsiness of your pelican, all the 

 solemn want of dignity of your parrot, 

 all the gaunt ungainliness of a flamin- 

 go, with all the extravagant chromatic 

 conflict of a mandarin duck. SucJi a 

 bird. I made it out of the skeletons 

 of a stork and a toucan and a job lot 

 of feathers. Taxidermy of that kind 

 is just pure joy. Bellows, to a real 

 artist in the art. 



"How did I come to make it.' Sim- 

 ple enough, as all great inventions 

 are. One of those young genii who 

 write us Science Notes in the papers 

 got hold of a German pamphlet about 

 the birds of New Zealand, and trans- 

 lated some of it by means of a diction- 

 ary and his mother-wit — he must have 

 been one of a large family with a 

 small mother — and he got mixed be- 

 tween the living apteryx and the ex- 

 tinct anomalopteryx talked about a 



