‘What an extraordinary thing!’
‘It’s too fascinating!’
‘Like those Babylonian hieroglyphics at the British Museum.’
‘Yes; or radium.’
‘Or that rhinoceros in Fleet Street.’
‘But how old he must be!’
‘It is said that he escaped to the forest,’ continued the Biologist; ‘and his keeper lost all trace of him. We mean to raise a fund for an expedition to find him.’
‘What’s the good of him?’ asked a surly man—one of the Bashkirtseffites—abruptly.
‘The good, sir? It would be the most important thing in Science for centuries!’
‘What good will it do the community, I should like to know? Will it increase our output, or raise the standard of comfort, or do anything for Civilisation?’