Alps are inaccessible, we certainly should have attempted to gain them
had not the time set for our departure arrived before we had completed
the investigation for which we were sent.

One relic, however, I carried away with me. It was a single greenish
bronzed feather, found high up in the mountains by a native, and sold
to me for a somewhat large sum of money.

Darwin believed the ux to be covered with greenish plumage; Wallace
was too far away to observe the color of the great birds; but all the
natives of Tasmania unite in affirming that the plumage of the ux is
green.

It was not only the color of this feather that made me an eager
purchaser, it was the extraordinary length and size. I knew of no
living bird large enough to wear such a feather. As for the color,
that might have been tampered with before I bought it, and, indeed,
testing it later, I found on the fronds traces of sulphate of copper.
But the same thing has been found in the feathers of certain birds
whose color is metallic green, and it has been proven that such birds
pick up and swallow shining bits of copper pyrites.

Why should not the ux do the same thing?

Still, my only reason for believing in the existence of the bird was
this single feather. I had easily proved that it belonged to no known
species of bird. I also proved it to be similar to the tail-feathers
of the ux-skin in Antwerp. But the feathers on the Antwerp specimen
were gray, and the longest of them was but three feet in length, while
my huge, bronze-green feather measured eleven feet from tip to tip.