of Monaco and Baron de Becasse wore anxious smiles. But when her
violet eyes met mine I gave her a glance of encouragement, and that
glance, I am forced to confess, was not dictated by scientific
approval, but by something that never entirely dries up in the
mustiest and dustiest of savants--the old Adam implanted in us all.

Now, I knew perfectly well what her subject must be; so did every man
present. For it was no secret that his Majesty of Belgium had been
swindled by some natives in Tasmania, and had paid a very large sum of
money for a skin of that gigantic bird, the ux, which has been so
often reported to exist among the inaccessible peaks of the Tasmanian
Mountains. Needless, perhaps, to say that the skin proved a fraud,
being nothing more than a Barnum contrivance made up out of the skins
of a dozen ostriches and cassowaries, and most cleverly put together
by Chinese workmen; at least, such was the report made on it by Sir
Peter Grebe, who had been sent by the British Society to Antwerp to
examine the acquisition. Needless, also, perhaps, to say that King
Leopold, of Belgium, stoutly maintained that the skin of the ux was
genuine from beak to claw.

For six months there had been a most serious difference of opinion
among European ornithologists concerning the famous ux in the Antwerp
Museum; and this difference had promised to result in an open quarrel
between a few Belgian savants on one side and-all Europe and Great
Britain on the other.

Scientists have a deep--rooted horror of anything that touches on
charlatanism; the taint of trickery not only alarms them, but drives
them away from any suspicious subject, and usually ruins,
scientifically speaking, the person who has introduced the subject for