inary Museum visitors. Two hours later, I
noticed that he was closely examining the lizard cases. Then later, he
seemed interested in my collection of prints illustrating the living
world of the ante-diluvian period. It was then that I approached him,
and, finding him apparently intelligent, with, as it seemed, a bent
towards lizards, and further, discovering that he had traveled in Peru
and Colombia, took him to the study.

The man had some unusual habits. He was absolutely lacking in that sense
of respect, as I may term it, usually accorded to one in my position.
One who is a professor and curator becomes accustomed to a certain
amount of, well, diffidence in laymen. The attitude is entirely natural.
It is a tribute. But Rounds was not that way. He was perfectly at ease.
He had an air of quiet self-possession. He refused the chair I
indicated, the chair set for visitors and students, and instead, walked
to the window and threw up the lower sash, taking a seat on the sill,
with one foot resting on the floor and the other swinging. Thus, he
looked as though he were prepared to leap, or to jump or run. He gave me
the impression of being on the alert. Without asking permission, he
filled and lit his pipe, taking his tobacco from a queerly made pouch,
and using but one hand in the process.

"What I was looking for," he said, "is a kind of lizard. Yet it is not a
lizard. It is too hard and thin in the body to be that. It runs on its
hind legs. It is white. Its bite is poisonous. It lives in the
equatorial districts of Colombia."

"Have you seen one?" I asked.

"No," was the reply. Then after a moment he asked, "Why?"

"Because there is no such living creature," I said.

"How do you know?" he said abruptly.

"The lizard group is thoroughly classified," I said. "There is nothing
answering to that description. In the first place--"

"Does that make it non-existent? Your classification of what you know?"
he interrupted.

"I have made a study of the Saurians," I said.

"No you haven't," he said. "You have read what other men have written
and that is not the same thing."

"Really," I began, but he broke in.

"I mean to say that you have never been in any new equatorial country,"
he said. "Your manner shows that. You are too quiet. Too easy. Too
sedentary. You would have been killed because of your lack of
vigilance."

That is, as nearly as I can repeat and remember, the opening of the
conversation. There was an a