A PICKWICKIAN BLUNDER. 37 



delight, therefore, when from the tangled grass he 

 drew an upright stone, with lines chiseled on three 

 sides and on the fourth a rude figure resembling 

 more than any thing else one of those odd fictions 

 which geologists call restored specimens. On a ledge 

 near were huge depressions like foot-prints. They 

 were foot-prints of birds, no doubt, and quite as per- 

 fect as those found in more favored localities, and 

 from which whole skeletons had been constructed by 

 learned men. 



Both specimens were forwarded to, and at the 

 expense of, noted savans of the East. Our professor 

 called the pillar from the tangled grass an altar 

 raised by early races to the winds. The short lines, 

 he suggested, designated the different points of the 

 compass, while the rude figure was intended for 

 Boreas. Our scientists toward the rising sun met 

 the boxes at the depot, paid charges, and careful 

 draymen bore them to the expectant museum. 



One hour after, seven wise men might have been 

 seen wending their way sorrowfully homeward, with 

 hands crossed meditatively under their coat-tails, and 

 pocket vacuums where lately were modern coins. 

 Government clearly had a case against our professor. 

 Science decided that he had removed a stone telling 

 in surveyors' signs just what section and township 

 it was on. The figure which he had imagined a 

 heathen idea of Boreas was the fancy of some sur- 

 veyor's idle moment — a shocking sketch of an im- 

 possible buffalo. Whether the bird-tracks had a 

 common origin, or were hewn by the hatchets of the 

 red man, is a point still under discussion. 



