The Art of Money Getting

I hold that every man should, like Cuvier, the French naturalist, thoroughly know his business. So proficient was he in the study of natural history, that you might bring to him the bone, or even a section of a bone of an animal which he had never seen described, and, reasoning from analogy, he would be able to draw a picture of the object from which the bone had been taken. On one occasion his students attempted to deceive him. They rolled one of their number in a cow skin and put him under the professor’s table as a new specimen. When the philosopher came into the room, some of the students asked him what animal it was. Suddenly the animal said I am the devil and I am going to eat you.