Daily Casefile · Audit

The Swollen Count at the Orinoco Headwaters

≈ 6 min

The Royal Botanical Society of London despatches collecting expeditions under a fixed reimbursement schedule: each pressed and mounted herbarium specimen earns the expedition leader a standard fee of four shillings, while live root-ball specimens in sealed clay-pot containers command eight shillings apiece. Dr. Phineas Ault returned to Southampton in August 1896 and submitted his specimen collection manifest, claiming reimbursement for the full haul he brought back from the Upper Orinoco. The Society's Treasurer has asked the audit committee to verify whether the counts and descriptions on Ault's manifest accord with the records kept by the expedition's own field surveyor, the porterage contractor, and the Society's receiving clerk. You are to read the six lines of the manifest against the four cross-reference records and determine whether any filed claim is inconsistent with the independent evidence.