ROC'S EGG, NOW IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.
"In a note explaining this story, Colonel Yule says there was once a bird in Madagascar, where Polo places the roc, that was much larger than any known bird of the present day. Its eggs have been found in a fossil state, and one of them is preserved in the British Museum. It measures thirteen and a quarter by six and a half inches (length and width), and the capacity of the shell is nearly three and a half gallons. It was undoubtedly from this bird that the fable of the roc arose."
Frank ventured to ask Fred if he had found from Marco Polo's book what kind of money was used in China at the time he visited that country.
CHINESE BANK-NOTE OF THE MING DYNASTY.
"I am just coming to that," Fred answered. "Polo says that the great emperor, Kublai-Khan, was a wonderful man. 'He transformed the bark of the mulberry-tree into something resembling sheets of paper, and these into money, which cost him nothing at all, so that you might say he had the secret of alchemy to perfection. And these pieces of paper he made to pass current universally, over all his kingdoms and provinces and territories, and whithersoever his sovereignty extended; and nobody, however important he thought himself, dared to refuse them on pain of death."
"History repeats itself," said Doctor Bronson; "for many a modern government has made the same laws in order to compel the circulation of its promises to pay."