Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 13.djvu/214

202 he was going to talk! Don't tell me the people won't be fooled by this!" (A tail, four inches in length, was one of the appendages of the monstrosity.) "Cox, look at that tail; take hold of it! That tail alone is worth a million! I made a difference in the toes, because it would not do to have him too perfect. The arms we made proportionately longer than the legs, so as to resemble the ape type. We propose to let the scientific men bore into him, but they must confine themselves to certain parts of his body, and there we have fixed him by putting in bones."

At this time, having exhausted their funds, the worthies applied to Barnum for means to bury their prodigy, who advanced $2,000 for the purpose. But where to place him was the query! Barnum declared that Connecticut would not do, for to resurrect him in a State so celebrated for humbugs in the way of "basswood hams," "wooden nutmegs," "fraudulent clocks," and the "Great American Show-man," would at once ruin the enterprise.

Finally Colorado, the "Wonder State," was decided upon, and the stone man sent thither and buried along with a turtle and salmon trout of like composition. Next one Conant visited the Rocky Mountains as a geologist, and, at the proper time, discovered the image. Barnum, happening (!) to be lecturing on temperance in Colorado at the time of the discovery, announced that he would give $20,000 for the "find;" but., this offer, of course, was rejected with scorn. Barnum now gave Prof. Taylor $100 to bore into the image and report. Hull, who had heard from scientific men that boring into a true fossil would show crystals, adroitly substituted crystal dust for that obtained, while the professor's attention was otherwise engaged; and all seemed to be going on swimmingly. Finally Prof. Marsh was again called upon for an opinion, and at once detected the fraud, calling attention to the fact that the image presented a rotundity of figure incompatible with the theory of one who had died and become fossilized, in which case the abdomen would naturally be sunken and collapsed. Remembering the Cardiff hoax, this decision caused the people to fight shy of the exhibition. Ultimately suspicion was confirmed by the admissions of Cox, Case, Babcock, and others connected with the enterprise, who, falling out among themselves, at once spread the facts far and wide, in their desire to injure each other; thus forever blasting all hopes of financial success.

Another would-be candidate for archæological and pecuniary honors was one William Ruddock, of Thornton, St. Clair County, Michigan, who in 1876 manufactured, from water-lime, sand, and gravel, a "petrified man," which was claimed to have been found in the gravel-pits of Pine River. Ruddock's pecuniary resources being exceedingly limited, he contented himself with a figure less than four feet in height, with arms folded across the breast; the model having evidently been taken from an "effigy in lava," which illustrates one of J. Ross Browne's