In Search of the Unknown

Where the slanting forest eaves,
Shingled tight with greenest leaves,
Sweep the scented meadow-sedge,
Let us snoop along the edge;
Let us pry in hidden nooks,
Laden with our nature books,
Scaring birds with happy cries,
Chloroforming butterflies,
Rooting up each woodland plant,
Pinning beetle, fly, and ant,
So we may identify
What we've ruined, by-and-by.




IN SEARCH OF THE UNKNOWN


I


Because it all seems so improbable--so horribly impossible to me now,
sitting here safe and sane in my own library--I hesitate to record an
episode which already appears to me less horrible than grotesque. Yet,
unless this story is written now, I know I shall never have the
courage to tell the truth about the matter--not from fear of ridicule,
but because I myself shall soon cease to credit what I now know to be
true. Yet scarcely a month has elapsed since I heard the stealthy
purring of what I believed to be the shoaling undertow--scarcely a
month ago, with my own eyes, I saw that which, even now, I am
beginning to believe never existed. As for the harbor-master--and the
blow I am now striking at the old order of things--But of that I shall
not speak now, or later; I shall try to tell the story simply and
truthfully, and let my friends testify as to my probity and the
publishers of this book corroborate them.

On the 29th of February I resigned my position under the government
and left Washington to accept an offer from Professor Farrago--whose
name he kindly permits me to use--and on the first day of April I
entered upon my new and congenial duties as general superintendent of
the water-fowl department connected with the Zoological Gardens then
in course of erection at Bronx Park, New York.

For a week I followed the routine, examining the new foundations,
studying the architect's plans, following the surveyors through the
Bronx thickets, suggesting arrangements for water-courses and pools
destined to be included in the enclosures for swans, geese, pelicans,
herons, and such of the waders and swimmers as we might expect to
acclimate in Bronx Park.

It was at that time the policy of the trustees and officers of the
Zoological Gardens neither to employ collectors nor to send out
expeditions in search of specimens. The society decided to depend upon
voluntary contributions, and I was always busy, part of the day, in
dictating answers to correspondents who wrote offering their services
as hunters of big game, collectors of all sorts of fauna, trappers,
snarers, and also to those who offered specimens for sale, usually at
exorbitant rates.

To the proprietors of five-legged kittens, mangy lynxes, moth-eaten
coyotes, and dancing bears I returned courteous but uncompromising
refusals--of course, first submitting all such letters, together with
my replies, to Professor Farrago.

One day towards the end of May, however, just as I was leaving Bronx
Park to return to town, Professor Lesard, of the reptilian department,
called out to me that Professor Farrago wanted to see me a moment; so
I put my pipe into my pocket again and retraced my steps to the
temporary, wooden building occupied by Professor Farrago, general
superintendent of the Zoological Gardens. The professor, who was
sitting at his desk before a pile of letters and replies submitted for
approval by me, pushed his glasses down and looked over them at me
with a whimsical smile that suggested amusement, impatience,
annoyance, and perhaps a faint trace of apology.

"Now, here's a letter," he said, with a deliberate gesture towards a
sheet of paper impaled on a file--"a letter that I suppose you
remember." He disengaged the sheet of paper and handed it to me.

"Oh yes," I replied, with a shrug; "of course the man is
mistaken--or--"

"Or what?" demanded Professor Farrago, tranquilly, wiping his glasses.

"--Or a liar," I replied.

After a silence he leaned back in his chair and bade me read the
letter to him again, and I did so with a contemptuous tolerance for
the writer, who must have been either a very innocent victim or a very
stupid swindler. I said as much to Professor Farrago, but, to my
surprise, he appeared to waver.

"I suppose," he said, with his near-sighted, embarrassed smile, "that
nine hundred and ninety-nine men in a thousand would throw that letter
aside and condemn the writer as a liar or a fool?"

"In my opinion," said I, "he's one or the other."

"He isn't--in mine," said the professor, placidly.