Genre:

Reportage, Spoof

Subjects:

Natural History, Ornithology, Comparative Philology, Laboratories, Creationism, Cultural Geography, Race

    Subtitled 'From our facetious friend who is studying Natural History on the Shores of the Shannon', this article describes the author's visit to the 'Laboratory of the "Patent Patriotic Incubator Company"', which revived the phoenix and which plans to 'extend their re-creations' to the megatherium and the dodo. Notes that 'the scientific operator' blew air onto the phoenix's ashes (which looked 'exceedingly like small coal') and that, despite protests from sceptical onlookers, a 'rara avis' 'rose from the dust-heap', a bird which was 'one that is sacrificed to Epicurus on Michaelmas Day'—an 'Irish goose'.