Exactly five weeks after my arrival the last Diplodocus in the world breathed its last.

Two days later the world's visible supply of Pterodactyls passed into the realms of the annihilated.

The Dodo, the largest and sweetest song-bird I have ever known, the only bird in all the primeval forests possessed of a diaphragm capable of expressing harmonies of what for want of a better term I may call a Wagnerian range, quickly followed suit, and in its train, alas! went the others, Creosauri, Dicosauri, Thracheotomi, Megacheropodae, Manicuridae, and the Willumjay, the latter a gigantic parrot with a voice like silver that rang continuously through the forests like a huge fire bell.

At the end of the tenth week of my mission a message was received from Noah.
"Dear Grandpa," he wrote: "Can't you do something to stave off King Ptush?
In making up my passenger-list I can't get hold of enough mammals to fill an inside room.

I have been through the country with a fine-tooth comb, and as far as I can find out there isn't a prehistoric beast left in creation.