The Unnatural History of the Sea 175 



tion of the unnatural history of the deep, deep sea. I once 

 wrote an article on the luminous animals of the Pacific, 

 With their shining glands and luminous headlights of pale, 

 cold, green fire, the truth of these creatures is stranger than 

 their fiction. Their strange weird forms, their long barbed 

 teeth and waving tentacles, the lamps they bear, with phos- 

 phorescent glow, all this aroused my enthusiasm and sharp- 

 ened my pen. But the ink I used was black, and it fell 

 below the range of the yellow standards. As the paper was 

 copied and syndicated, the brightness of the colors grew, 

 and to each fish was assigned a bulb of light of the latest 

 Edison pattern. People would read the article now, which 

 they would not, so long as it remained mere truth. Fiction 

 is surely livelier, and, moreover, is much more easily pro- 

 duced than mere truth. 



Two years ago the minute infusorian, Peridinium, ap- 

 peared on the California coast in such vast numbers, that 

 the water was colored the dull reddish hue for miles along- 

 shore, and at night was brilliantly phosphorescent. Certain 

 papers indulged in remarkable flights of the imagination. 

 The light was described as " rotted sea weed," caused by 

 escaping gas from cracks during an earthquake. Some per- 

 sons were alarmed, as they had been told that burning 

 sulphur had escaped from an earthquake crack in the earth. 

 Possibly it is not necessary that all who run should know 

 about the peridinium and its powers of emitting light when 

 shaken or disturbed ; yet, it is generally understood that the 

 people are taxed for a supply of adequate information along 

 certain zoological lines. 



The genuine animal story is always fascinating. There 

 are two types of such story, and both may belong to litera- 

 ture, and both are legitimate. In the one case the animal 

 occupies the- center of the stage, its form and its habits, 

 clearly and truthfully exhibited, while beside it, in contrast 

 are the emotions which a decent man may feel when brought 

 into such good company. An animal storyof this sort is 



