Some Cranks and their Crotchets 459 



s 



which was pronounced by Dr. Hitchcock to have 

 belonged to an extinct batrachian ; but Dr. Barratt 

 saw in it the bone of a pachyderm. " Why, sir," 

 said he, " it was their principal beast of burden, 

 as big as a rhinoceros and as gentle as a lamb. 

 The children of Homo tridactylus used to play 

 about his feet, sir, in perfect safety. I call him 

 Mega-ergaton docile, ' the teachable great-worker.' 

 Liddell and Scott give only the masculine, ergates, 

 but for a beast of burden, sir, I prefer the neuter 

 form. A gigantic pachyderm, sir ; and Dr. Hitch- 

 cock, sir, perfect fool, sir, says it was a bullfrog ! " 

 The mortal remains of this gentle paleontologist 

 rest in the beautiful Indian Hill Cemetery at Mid- 

 dletown, and his gravestone, designed and placed 

 there "by my dear friend, the late Charles Brown- 

 ing, is appropriate and noble. For the doctor was 

 after all a sterling man, whose unobtrusive merits 

 were great, while his foibles were not important. 

 The stone is a piece of fossil tree-trunk, brought 

 over from Portland, imbedded in an amorphous 

 block untouched by chisel, save where, on a bit 

 of polished surface, one reads the name and dates, 

 with the simple legend, "The Testimony of the 

 Kocks." 



November, 1898. 



