A Savan [sic] Sold

Washington, DC, Evening Star, 7/21/1866, p. 4:

A SAVAN SOLD--The Paris correspondend of the Nation, tells of a learned savan connected with the Garden of Plants, who has been trying for some time, but unsuccessfully, to hatch three crocodile eggs (two of them white and one red) presented him last winter by a traveler returned from the East, with a view to "donating" France with a new article of food--stewed crocodile being declared by said traveler to be both palatable and nutritious in a high degree. The failure of the learned doctor to hatch these eggs, which he is said to have carried constantly in his bosom for the last seven months, wrapped in a flannel waistcoat especially donned for that purpose, is attributed to the fact of their not being crocodile eggs at all, but three billiard balls, abstracted from a "hell" at Cairo, by the perfidious "friend."