The Humbug AN ARTFUL DECEPTION
“Busy, Harriet?” came a voice from the doorway.
Harriet Weisz turned from her monitor. “Come on in, Erik, what’s up?” “Check out this email,” said her colleague. “Somebody claiming to have discovered a new species of insect.”
“That wouldn’t be that surprising,” she answered as she took his laptop. “Ten thousand new species are identified every year.”
“Yeah, but look at the photos he attached,” said Erik.
Harriet skimmed the text as she scrolled down. “‘Previously unknown to science’…‘missing link’… What the heck?!” She had reached the images. “What is this?”
“Kind of looks like cricket legs, you’ve got sort of an earwig structure there at the back, and those wings almost look like Lepidoptera, don’t they?” Erik said, nodding. “No wonder he’s calling it a missing link.”
Harriet had recovered. “Nice try,” she said. “Did you make this up?”
“It’s not my prank,” said Erik, raising his hands in mock defense. “It’s a genuine, bona fide email I got.”
“It’s Darwin’s humbug,” she said.
Erik looked blank. “It’s what?”
“Darwin’s—you’ve never heard this story?” she said. “OK, well, it’s one of these stories that people tell that’s probably not actually true, but supposedly some schoolboys once decided to play a trick on Darwin. They caught several different insects,
