"Have you seen one?" I asked.
"No," was the reply. Then after a moment he asked, "Why?"
"Because there is no such living creature," I said.
"How do you know?" he said abruptly.
"The lizard group is thoroughly classified," I said. "There is nothing answering to that description. In the first place—"
"Does that make it non-existent? Your classification of what you know?" he interrupted.
"I have made a study of the Saurians," I said.
"No you haven't," he said. "You have read what other men have written and that is not the same thing."
"Really," I began, but he broke in.
"I mean to say that you have never been in any new equatorial country," he said. "Your manner shows that. You are too quiet. Too easy. Too sedentary. You would have been killed because of your lack of vigilance."