SCIENCE IN DIFFICULTIES.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2315, 18 August 1880, Page 3

SCIENCE IN DIFFICULTIES.

A scientific expedition has come to grief and the circumstances of the break up of the party is causing some merriment. The individuals are well known but not to be too minute we may state that one is an adept in eel-skinning, the second a renowned walkist, the third is a brilliant metallic geuuis and the forth has a reputation unapproachable for beer and skittles. The quartette, seized with the idea that a grand athletic travelling exhibition would prove a payable speculation, held several caucuses, the result being that the show was satisfactively arranged. The man of eels and oysters was to find the necessary funds, beer and skittles was to give brilliant demonstrations in the manly art, and walkist and talkist were to assist in dividing the spoil. When the time for putting the venture into proper shape approached, eels and oysters invited the auctioneer to bis stronghold and transformed everything, even to his last languishing crayfish, into cash. But creditors haunted the banquet, and in eluding them and drowning bis miseries, poor piscatorious came to grief. As his purse grew light bis heart grew beav} r , and when the walkist, the talkist, and beer and skittles waited on him they found their golden visions changed into brass. The result is that the athletic show Ims broken up, Piscatorious has departed the scene of his adventures, leaving a few anxious and regretful enquirers behind him, and the walkist, the talkist, and the beer and skittles are naturally lamenting the decay of a project that was to have brought them in no end of wealth.