things, his scientific lack of concentration of
which I have already spoken enabling him with much grace to be
reminded of an experience in the Transvaal by a chance allusion of my
own to the peculiar habits of the Antillean Sardine. In the meanwhile
the work of slaughter was going on apace, and whole species were
gradually becoming extinct. Exactly five weeks after my arrival the
last Diplodocus in the world breathed its last. Two days later the
world's visible supply of Pterodactyls passed into the realms of the
annihilated. The Dodo, the largest and sweetest song-bird I have ever
known, the only bird in all the primeval forests possessed of a
diaphragm capable of expressing harmonies of what for want of a better
term I may call a Wagnerian range, quickly followed suit, and in its
train, alas! went the others, Creosauri, Dicosauri, Thracheotomi,
Megacheropodae, Manicuridae, and the Willumjay, the latter a gigantic
parrot with a voice like silver that rang continuously through the
forests like a huge fire bell. At the end of the tenth week of my
mission a message was received from Noah.

"Dear Grandpa," he wrote: "Can't you do something to stave
off King Ptush? In making up my passenger-list I can't get
hold of enough mammals to fill an inside room. I have been
through the country with a fine-tooth comb, and as far as I
can find out there isn't a prehistoric beast left in
creation. If this thing goes on much longer I shall be
compelled to load up with a cargo of coon-cats, armadillos,
hippopotami and Plymouth rocks. Get a move on!

"NOAH."

My first impulse was to hand this letter without a word to His
Majesty, but on second thoughts I decided not to do this, since it
might involve me in a humiliating explanation of my grandson's foolish
obsession about the impending flood. I had too much pride to wish
King Ptush to know that I had a human brain-storm on the list of my
posterity, so I threw the brick upon which the letter was engraved
into a neighboring fish-pond, and resolved to get rid of His Majesty
by strategy. For three nights I pondered over my plan of operations,
and then the great method came to me like the dawning of the sun after
a night of abysmal darkness. I went to the royal tent and discovered
His Majesty hard at work chiseling out an article on "How I Brought
Down My First Proterosaurus" on a slab of granite he had brought with
him. As I approached he smiled broad