Our narrator is hired by the New York Zoological Society to assist a professor who is in charge of their gardens and exhibits. He embarks on his search for a Great Auk, a species that was extinct for fifty or so years. it is a collection of romantic comedies. An unnamed protagonist hopes around the world, searching for zoological oddities but mostly finding doe-eyed young women and hilarious calamity. It appears to the writer that there is urgent need of more nature books books that are scraped clear of fiction and which display only the carefully articulated skeleton of fact. Hence this little volume, presented with some hesitation and more modesty. Various chapters have, at intervals, appeared in the pages of various publications. it may inspire enthusiasm for natural and scientific research, and inculcate a passion for accurate observation among the young.