The Story of a Skull - Page 2

about a yard
above the stable door. It was too high to be properly seen without
getting a ladder, and when the gardener told me that it was a bulldog's
skull, I thought no more about it.

One day, several months later, I took a long look at it and got the
idea that it was not a bulldog's skull--that it was more like the skull
of a human being of a very low type. I then asked my hostess to let me
have it, and she said, "Yes, certainly, take it if you want it." Then
she added, "But what in the world do you want that horrid old skull
for?" I said I wanted to find out what it was, and then she told me
that it was a bulldog's skull--the gardener had told her. I replied
that I did not think so, that it looked to me more like the skull of a
cave-man who had inhabited those parts half a million years ago,
perhaps. This speech troubled her very much, for she was a religious
woman, and it pained her to hear unorthodox statements about the age of
man on the earth. She said that I could not have the skull, that it was
dreadful to her to hear me say it might be a human skull; that she
would order the gardener to take it down and bury it somewhere in the
grounds at a distance from the house. Until that was done she would not
go near the stables--it would be like a nightmare to see that dreadful
head on the wall. I said I would remove it immediately; it was mine, as
she had given it to me, and it was not a man's skull at all--I was only
joking, so that she need not have any qualms about it.

That pacified her, and I took down the old skull, which looked more
dreadful than ever when I climbed up to it, for though the dome of it
was bleached white, the huge eye cavities and mouth were black and
filled with old black mould and dead moss. Doubtless it had been very
many years in that place, as the long nails used in fastening it there
were eaten up with rust.

When I got back to London the box with the skull in it was put away in
my book-room, and rested there forgotten for two or three years. Then
one day I was talking on natural history subjects to my publisher, and
he told me that his son, just returned from Oxford, had developed a
keen interest in osteology and was making a collection of mammalian
skulls from the whale and elephant and hippopotamus to the harvest-
mouse and lesser shrew. This reminded me of the long-forgotten skull,
and I told him I had something to send him for his boy's collection,
but before sending it I would find out what it was. Accordingly I sent
the skull to Mr. Frank E. Beddard, the prosector of the Zoological
Society, asking him to tell me what it was. His reply was that it was
the skull of an adult gorilla--a fine large specimen.

It was then sent on to