Æpyornis Island
"Æpyornis Island" | |
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Short story by H. G. Wells | |
Country | United Kingdom |
Genre(s) | Science fiction |
Publication | |
Published in | Pall Mall Budget |
Media type | |
Publication date | 27 December 1894 |
"Æpyornis Island", or "Aepyornis Island", is a short story by H. G. Wells, first published in 1894 in the Pall Mall Budget.[1] It was included in The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents, the first collection of short stories by Wells, first published in 1895.
In the story, a man looking for eggs of Aepyornis, an extinct flightless bird, passes two years alone on a small island with an Aepyornis that has hatched.
Historical background
Aepyornis maximus (the giant elephant-bird) was a giant flightless bird that lived in Madagascar. It became extinct probably in the 17th or 18th century; it is thought that it was hunted excessively by humans. The bird was more than 2 metres (6 ft 7 in) tall, and its egg weighed about 10 kilograms (22 lb). Fragments of the eggs are still found.[2]
Story summary
The narrator starts a conversation with a rough individual named Butcher in an unspecified foreign location. Remembering reports of a court case years earlier, in which Butcher sued his employer for salary accrued while cast away on a desert island for four years, the narrator encourages him to tell the story related to the case:
Butcher, employed by a collector, is engaged in finding Aepyornis eggs. He is looking for them in a swamp on the east coast of Madagascar, helped by two native assistants in a canoe who are probing the mud with iron rods. They find several whole eggs but one is dropped by an assistant who says that he was bitten by a centipede. Butcher beats the assistant, as a result of which both natives conspire to
The canoe drifts onto an
References
- ^ Æpyornis Island title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, accessed 16 Sept 2014.
- ^ "Aepyornis maximus"Prehistoric Fauna. Retrieved 11 March 2020.