The Petrified Man.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume X, Issue 3251, 9 July 1889, Page 2

The Petrified Man.

A trrim andtfalpalbe Fraud.

At length the origin of the" petrified man" says the Sydney Daily ( Telegraph has been placed beyond * doubt, and it now transpires that the so called fossil is a grim and palpable fraud. This is what Mr Wilkinson, tho Government geologist, said from the first, A' 1 moment's glance was enough to convince him that those perfect Soman features had never graced a prehistoric visage, and that, so far from that giant frame over having pulsated with life, it .was nothing, and never had been anything but a block of cold marble. The medical men who visited the shrine drew widely different conclusions, and the surgeon, whom most people were disposed to regard as a specialist ?v in matters or the kind, judging £ from purely external evidence, and that merely the ovidenco of shape and form, was as positive of the bona fides of the " potrifaetion" bb Mr Wilkinson and his friends wove that it was the work of an impostor. Now the mystery is cleared up, and the credit, it appears, is due to a policeman. Of course the truth would /* eventually have been with scientists, ' <Sp who could hav6 proved their opinions conclusively by cutting a slice out of one of the marble legs and thus disclosing the absence of organic remains. But, after all, the public will, perbips, be better satisfied with tho kind of proof that has at length been obtained. We do not require a doctor to tell ns that a man whoso head we have seen rolling about in the gutter is dead, and it is quite unnecessary for a geologist to scienti. fically demonstrate that a figure which a policeman knows to haye been carved out of a block of stone from a woll-known quarry, then doctored with acids and then sent iu a strohg box to Sydney never had been ; a living man. And this, and more besides, is what Sub-Inspector Ford, of Orangn, tells the Minister of Mines in the interesting report which was handed round theLegislativo Assembly ill which ho says:— "I am thoroughly convinced that tho marble figure was made at Croaker's old public house, at Cow , Flat, by G. F. Sala, and that the ( marble was obtained from Bell's quarry, about. two miles from Cow Flat, I lmvo obtained the following information ;—That Joseph Bell conveyed from his marblo quarry about five months since a large pieco of marble, about one ton weight, to G, F. Bala'a residence (Croaker's old public house) at Cow Flat, and put it out of the dray halfway into tho back kitchen through the door, and Bell Btates that some ten or twelve weeks afterwards he saw that a man had been modelled out of it by Sala, and that he used acids, and whilst Sala was making the Jbj figure that his son Fred was always on the watch, and would at once whistle if any person came in sight, and that Sala would then come out of the kitohon and shut tho door,"