The curtain dropped zigzaggingly upon the first scene. There was a tense silence out front, then a burst of applause […]

Now kool my downy kicksies—the style for me, / Built on a plan werry naughty,

I went to see the Egyptian, and the Hoodoo doctors too. They shook their heads, and told me there was nothing they could do.

To make unputdownable an intricate, technical account of the anatomies of worms, and other inconspicuous denizens of a half-billion-year-old sea, is a literary tour-de-force. But the theory that [Stephen Jay] Gould wrings out of his fossils is a sorry mess.