imed the united bodies of geologists, physiologists,
professors, philosophers, artisans, and artesian-well borers, "that is
indeed a long word!"

One set of learned men declared the thing to be possible, another
denied its possibility.

And why was it not possible? Because at the period of coal-formations
neither birds nor any one of the mammalia could exist, or did exist,
in the bowels of the earth. There we find only traces of plants, of
mussels, of fish sometimes.

And why is it credible? Because in these days we make discoveries
every day. Humboldt declared that in the antediluvian world no apes
had ever lived, for the reason that the fossil of an ape had never
been found. Since then one fossil ape has been discovered in England,
in France three of the Ourang species.

By degrees the strife raged in every newspaper; it was taken up in
English, French, German, and American publications. At last it was
proposed that the matter should be referred to a commission of five
well-known professors, to whom the petrifaction should be submitted,
and who should decide the question in dispute. Doctor Felicius offered
one thousand ducats to the one who would prove that his bird's claw
was not a bird's claw.

The tribunal of the five learned judges examined the petrifaction
with microscopical attention, and after a long sitting brought in a
unanimous verdict that the impression was not made by the claw of a
Protornithos, but was that of a leaf belonging to the plant _Annularia
longefolia_; in fact, there could be no question of the bird species,
as the specimen of coal produced was not brown coal, but the _purest_
black, in which coal formation it was not possible for even a bird to
exist.

Doctor Felix Kaulmann quietly paid the thousand ducats, and thanked
the whole republic of professors for the service they had rendered to
the Bondavara coal; such an advertisement could not have been obtained
at an expense of forty thousand ducats. Let people say that the
Protornithos was a humbug--who cares? The reputation of the Bondavara
coal was firmly established on the best scientific grounds.

The period had now arrived when the undertaking should be floated at
the exchange. This, perhaps, is the greatest science on earth. The
stock-exchange has its good and its bad days. Sometimes it is full of
electricity, the sheep frolic in the meadow; at other times they hang
their heads and will not touch the beautiful grass. Sometimes the