Dinosaurs in the Attic Read Online Free PDF Page A

their research until he decided they were ready—which was far too long for Bickmore. When Bickmore and other students tried to find jobs elsewhere without informing Agassiz, the scientist was enraged. The final blow came when Agassiz discovered that Bickmore had been secretly raising money for an expedition to the Far East. In 1863, Agassiz declined to recommend Bickmore to a permanent position as his assistant, which amounted to little more than a de facto firing.

    Having raised enough money for his expedition, Bickmore set out for the East Indian Archipelago, carrying his two most treasured possessions: his Bible and a sketch plan of his own devising for the new museum. *3 The primary purpose of the trip was to collect birds and shells from the Spice Islands, Borneo, Java, and the other Malaysian and East Indian islands. During the three-year expedition, Bickmore survived several earthquakes, a fall into a volcanic crater, a landslide, and the shock of seeing part of his rare bird collection appear on his dinner plate.

    Bickmore enlisted native help in his collecting efforts, and displayed a shrewdness in bargaining that would later be evident in his negotiations with Boss Tweed about the founding of the Museum. "My mode of trading with these people," he wrote,

was extremely simple and avoided any unpleasant discussion. A small table was placed on the verandah along the front of the raja's house and I took a seat behind it. The natives then came up separately and placed their shells or lot of shells in a row on the table, and I placed opposite each of them whatever price I was willing to pay and then, pointing first to the money and then to the shells simply said, "Ini atau itu, " "This or that," leaving them to make their choice.

    Upon his return to the United States in 1867, Bickmore wasted no time in making contact with wealthy New Yorkers who could help further his plans. He had already met with many of these men before departing on his expedition, and they were impressed with the results he brought back. These men introduced the professor to some of their friends, among them J. Pierpont Morgan, Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., and Morris K. Jesup. Bickmore, who was a mere twenty-eight years old, talked many of these men into making the Museum their chief philanthropic pursuit.

    He succeeded largely because of his inexhaustible powers of persuasion. One colleague wrote that if anyone showed the slightest interest in his plan, Bickmore would plunge headlong "into that incessant preoccupation of his mind, the new museum building, its future, its uses, how it should develop, how it would feed school, college, and university ... how it would expand commensurately with the new continent's metropolis until it outrivaled ... the collective shows of all the world."

    This cadre of rich industrialists—who spent half their lives avoiding salesmen, people seeking favors and patronage, and business associates—simply could not escape the persistence of the poor young man from Maine.

    Bickmore assembled his group, and together they drafted a letter to the commissioners of Central Park. This letter simply informed the commissioners that the group had long desired to establish a great natural history museum in Central Park, and that they now had the opportunity to acquire a rare collection of mounted animals and skeletons from the widow of Edouard Verreaux of Paris. Would the commissioners be willing to provide for its reception and development? In the second week of 1869—at a time when Hawkins was hard at work on the plans for his own Paleozoic Museum—the Controller of the Park, Andrew Green, replied that they were ready to cooperate. On January 19, the group met again, passed a set of resolutions governing the new museum, and selected a board of trustees.

    Bickmore's next task was a good deal more difficult and unpleasant: he was charged with pushing the museum's charter through the state legislature, which at this time was