Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1903-09-12
HUNT FOR GIANT BIRD
German Expedition to Find the
Roc In Madagascar.
EVIDENCE OF LIVE SPECIMEN SEEN

One of Its Fresh Eggs, weighing
Twenty-seven Pounds, Said to Have
Been Found by the Natives-PrO-
fessOr Krause VIII Try to Secure
the Bird Alive.
For a single bird-S1OO,O0O!
That giant roc which terrorized Sind
bad the Sailor and all his men was no
myth, says the New York World. The
Arabian Nights" tells the truth when
1t speaks of that monster of the skies,
which would carry off a man in its
great claws Schezerade was telling
no fairy tale.
Professor Krause, foremost among
the savants Of the University Of Ber-
lin, is even now in Madagascar seek
ing the great bird which boy readers
know us the roc and which scientists
call the RpyOrnis. Arabian romance
had a shorter name-the roc. The
savant has been commissioned to en-
gage whatever men and transport he
needs and to spend 100000 marks il he
can bring back Just one of those giant
birds, long since believed to be extinct.
Have started on the hunt is the
last cable message which the senate
Of the university has received. Now,
it is all that those grave and spec
tacled German scientists can do to
wait for the great day when the in
trepid Krause shall return to civiliza-
ton with perhaps another message:
II have the roc ITSELF"
But how does Professor Krause
know that there is a live roc in the
heart of Madagascar? That question
Is most easy to answer because a fresh
egg has been found 1t was floating
down the quiet stream toward the
southeast coast, borne upon the bosom
of the current that had brought it from
the wild and almost unexplored in
terror of the great island off the east
African coast
Natives found it. With loud cries OF
joy they bore it to a little party Of
white men who happened to be near
by. One Glanced to be a naturalist
For a moment he was dumfoundedi
then he spoke. THE egg of the epy-
ornis," he said, "the roc of Arabian
fable The egg is fresh. 1t would
have turned within q week. The bird
that laid this egg is still alive!' The
great egg was twelve inches in diam
eter and twenty inches long. It
weighed twenty-seven pounds. Think
of a chick of such tremendous weight!
The white men were Germans. They
cabled at once to Berlin, and back the
next day came the order for Professor
Krause to take command and to work
his way up the river at any price to
find the live bird that laid the egg.
That the egg was still fresh proved
that the bird could not be far away.
The expedition is equipped with ev-
erything that science can suggest. Its
orders are to bring the great bird back
alive and to study its native haunts,
its life and its present condition. If
the expedition is successful, it will be
one of the notable achievements for
natural history of the present century
For a long period the marshes OF
Madagascar have yielded the fossil
eggs of these enormous extinct birds,
the rocs of days long since bygone-
The natives have known Of them for
many, many years and have been ac-
Customed to hunt them for naturalistS
by probing the bottoms of the swamps
with long iron rods. All the better
museums of the world have one or
more of the giant fossil eggs.
For the monster birds the name OF
@pyornis was proposed when the
first fossil eggs were found. Gradually.
it became accepted as the scientific
name of the giant bird that had laid
those great eggs. In the course OF
time naturalists were rewarded by the
81,
Some of these disinterred within re-
cent years indicate that they belonged
to birds bigger than any others known
to students of natural history. The
bones of the toes seemed almost as
large as those of mastodons. Some OF
the birds had four toes; others had
three. The toes can be told by the ex-
perts because of the absence of the
bony bridge at the lower end of the
shin bones, which are as thick and as
long as those of the average elephant
of today.
Many of the fossil eggs are far larger
than the fresh one just discovered.
Some Of them have a circumference Of
thirty inches and a longer girth Of
thirty-six inches The birds they have
Matched in prehistoric times have been
like the ordinary ostrich, yet possessed
of wings which gave them tremendous
powers of flight. They were endowed
with strength sufficient to give battle
to lions and tigers.
Should one of these great feathered
creatures be brought back to the coast
and successfully shipped to some men,
agerie or avairy it could easily be re-
garded as the most valuable natural
history specimen in the whole world.
An ordinary specimen, which is all
that Professor. Krause hopes for, would
be about fifteen feet high and would
weigh 1900 pounds.
The egg that was found floating
down the stream has been carefully
preserved. It's contents would equal
twenty dozen eggs of the ordinary hen
and would easily make an omelet for
the crew of n United States cruiser or