128 BY THE DEEP SEA. 



lecturer, for on the editor of one of the snippety periodicals 

 printing Kingsley's account with the sensational headline, "A 

 living fish-line," and without acknowledgment of the source 

 from which quoted, Mr. W. Mattieu Williams, F.R.A.S., F.C.S., 

 requoted it in his monthly " Gossip on Current Topics," 

 contributed to " Science Gossip," and headed it " Munchausen 

 Science." He coupled it with what he called " an equally 

 sensational account of the latest method of disposing of the 

 dead, by electroplating the corpse," and concludes, " It is 

 not my wont to be presumptuous, but in this case I do ven- 

 ture to suggest that for such revelations the general title of 

 Popular Science should be exchanged for that which I have 

 given, Munchausen Science." Of course, Mr. Williams was 

 a physicist, rather than a biologist, but Dr. Taylor, the 

 editor, professed to have a knowledge of marine biology, and 

 how he could have let Williams' strictures pass without com- 

 ment or explanation, is more wonderful than the account of 

 Linens. 



Davis gave up the attempt to measure the living Linens, 

 but when it was dead he unravelled it without stretching, 

 and found it to be twenty and two feet long. He adds: " I 

 give it as my firm opinion, that I speak within bounds when I 

 say the animal, when alive, might have been extended to four 

 times the length it presented when dead. It is, therefore, by 

 no means impossible that this most astonishing creature may 

 have been susceptible of being drawn out to the length of 

 twelve fathoms, or, according to the accounts of the fishermen, 

 to thirty yards or fifteen fathoms." 



I would only add that from my acquaintance with the 

 living Linens, I see no occasion whatever for taxing the Rev. 

 H. Davis or Canon Kingsley with exaggeration. Neither, I 

 think, will my readers, when they have read the following 

 quotation from Prof. W. C. Macintosh's " Monograph of 

 British Annelida " : " This is unquestionably the giant of the 

 race, and even now I am not quite satisfied about the limit of 



