"Yes, we make them out of fine porcelain. I tell you it is worth while. They fetch--one fetched £300 only the other day. That one was really genuine, I believe, but of course one is never certain. It is very fine work, and afterwards you have to get them dusty, for no one who owns one of these precious eggs has ever the temerity to clean the thing. That's the beauty of the business. Even if they suspect an egg they do not like to examine it too closely. It's such brittle capital at the best. "You did not know that taxidermy rose to heights like that. My boy, it has risen higher. I have rivalled the hands of Nature herself. One of the _genuine_ great auks"--his voice fell to a whisper--one of the _genuine_ great auks _was made by me_." "No. You must study ornithology, and find out which it is yourself. And what is more, I have been approached by a syndicate of dealers to stock one of the unexplored skerries to the north of Iceland with specimens. I may--some day. But I have another little thing in hand just now. Ever heard of the dinornis? "It is one of those big birds recently extinct in New Zealand. 'Moa' is its common name, so called because extinct: there is no moa now. See? Well, they have got bones of it, and from some of the marshes even feathers and dried bits of skin. Now, I am going to--well, there is no need to make any bones about it--going to _forge_ a complete stuffed moa. I know a chap out there who will pretend to make the find in a kind of antiseptic swamp, and say he stuffed it at once, as it threatened to fall to pieces. The feathers are peculiar, but I have got a simply lovely way of dodging up singed bits of ostrich plume. Yes, that is the new smell you noticed. They can only discover the fraud with a microscope, and they will hardly care to pull a nice specimen to bits for that. "In this way, you see, I give my little push in the advancement of science. "But all this is merely imitating Nature. I have done more than that in my time. I have--beaten her." He took his feet down from the mantel-board, and leant over confidentially towards me. "I have _created_ birds," he said in a low voice. "_New_ birds. Improvements. Like no birds that was ever seen before." He resumed his attitude during an impressive silence.