ImportError with packages

[mr19]

I'm running into import problems trying to create a
package that is similiar in layout to the one in the
docs described here:

http://www.boost.org/libs/python/doc/tutorial/doc/html/python/techniques.html#python.creating_packages

So my package layout is as follows:

xyzzy/
__init__.py
research/
__init__.py
_research.so
stats.pyc

My __init__.py file contains 2 lines:

from stats import *
from _research import *

With the directory containing 'xyzzy' on my
PYTHONPATH, the following occurs:

Python 2.4.2 (#2, Nov 3 2005, 11:35:03)
[GCC 3.2.3 20030502 (Red Hat Linux 3.2.3-52)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright" , "credits" or "license" for more
information.[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
>>> import xyzzy.research[/color][/color][/color]
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
File "xyzzy/research/__init__.py", line 2, in ?
from _research import *
ImportError: No module named _research

Running python with the -vv switch shows python does
indeed look at _research.so but does not load it.

However if I put the directory containing _research.so
on my PYTHONPATH the following command is successful:
[color=blue][color=green][color=darkred]
>>> import _research[/color][/color][/color]

Thanks for any help you can offer,

Marc