* * * * *
To Khona Oopalabad
The Doctor went one day,—
Of course, ere he reached it, he had
Discovered some things on the way.
Some lias fossils he found,
(Sure signs that coal must exist)
With Saurian footprints around,
And Phacops in crystaline schist.
He pick'd up a Mammoth's leg
Imbedded in petrified ice,
And near it, an addled egg
Which a Dodo had laid in gneiss.
With some Chara seeds in their pods,
And some ancient man-skin shoes,
And some fossil soap-stone gods
Adored by primæval Hindoos.
A Stenorhynchus he met
With a Ganoid lying beside,
And a Psammodus neatly set
In a Pleurotomaria's inside.
* * * * *
Then at length to the town he sought
Th' illustrious Doctor came,
And discovered a thing which he thought
Would give him immortal fame.
Down the side of a cliff near the town
He noticed there dribbled some
Queer substance, blacky-brown,
Which he deem'd petroleum.
Eureka! he cried. From the spot
He penn'd an official note,
But all men by this time had got
Distrustful of what he wrote.