PREFACE. 



The little book ' Sea Monsters Unmasked,' recently 

 issued as one of the Handbooks in connection with the 

 Great International Fisheries Exhibition has met with so 

 favourable a reception, that I have been honoured by the 

 request to continue the subject, and to treat also of some 

 of the Fables of the Sea, which once were universally 

 believed, and even now are not utterly extinct. 



The topic is not here exhausted. Other sea fables and 

 fallacies might be mentioned and explained ; but the 

 amount of letter-press, and the number of illustrations that 

 can be printed without loss for the small sum of one 

 shilling — the price at which these Handbooks are uniformly 

 published — is necessarily limited. I have, therefore, thought 

 it better to endeavour to make each chapter as complete 

 as possible than to crowd into the space allotted to me a 

 greater variety of subjects less fully and carefully discussed. 



I have the pleasure of acknowledging the kind assist- 

 ance I have again received in the matter of illustrations. 

 I gratefully appreciate Mr. Murray's permission to use 

 the woodcut of Hercules slaying the Hydra, taken from 

 Smith's ' Classical Dictionary,' and those of the golden 

 ornaments found by Dr. Schlicmann at Mycenai, and 



