When, next day, his uncle came, Perry could hardly restrain his impatience until a visit to the Museum had been arranged. He was proud of his work, as proud in completing the preparation of the skeleton and the model as he had been when, one evening two years before, in the red sand of the Eocene river bed in Egypt, he had shown his uncle the skull of the Moeritherium. But, at the same time, he was a little anxious, for the director of the local museum, though a scholar, was not an expert in paleontology.
The lad was on pins and needles, therefore, when, with his father and his uncle, the car slowed up at the Museum. Perry led them into the main hall and pointed to the wall.
“There!” he said.
The professor cast a quick glance at the model overhead, but, as Perry knew well, it was not the restoration, but the actual skeleton itself that interested the scientist and he walked up to the case. Carefully, with an examination of details that amazed Perry, for even he did not realize how much importance might attach to a small groove in a joint, the scientist scrutinized every bone, and every fragment of the plaster.
Courtesy of J. B. Lippincott & Co.
Pteranodon, Climbing for a Swoop.
The great flying reptile, twenty-one feet long, clawing his way up the cliff to get a start for his soaring flight; restoration from Gregory, in “Geology of To-day.”
“Excellent,” he said heartily, “excellent piece of work! Very well handled indeed, Perry. You’ve got a real specimen there, and the preparation is first class.”
The director, who had hurried out of his office on the approach of the car, heard the last couple of sentences and smiled at the boy.