CHAPTER II.
FOR AND AGAINST.
While the events above described were taking place, I was returning from a scientific expedition into the wild territory of Nebraska, U.S.A. In my position as assistant professor to the Natural History Museum in Paris, the French Government had nominated me to the expedition. After six months passed in Nebraska, I arrived in New York about the end of March, in charge of a valuable collection. I had arranged to sail for France at the beginning of May. In the meantime I was occupying myself in classifying my mineral, botanical, and zoological collections, when the accident happened to the Scotia.
I was perfectly well acquainted with the topic of the day: how could it be otherwise? I had read again and again the European and American journals without being any more enlightened. This mystery puzzled me. In the impossibility to form an opinion, I drifted from one extreme to the other. That there was something was an undoubted fact, and the unbelieving were invited to put their fingers into the side of the Scotia. When I arrived in New York the subject was being freely discussed. The
