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established by any evidence short of its aCtual capture and 
exhibition. Were we to have an opportunity of observing the 
supposed monster, even at a very short distance, we should keep 
complete silence on the interview. But Mr. Williams’s expla- 
nation seems to us as little satisfactory as the hypotheses of 
floating barrels, timbers of a wrecked vessel, with or without 
sea-weed attached, gigantic seals, sharks, &c., which have been 
put forward by other writers. It is simpler and safer to explain 
the alleged phenomena by the aid of “ unconscious cerebration.” 
The observers, whose “ early scientific education ” had probably 
in all cases been negleCted, have allowed themselves to become 
the slaves of a “ dominant idea.” 
On the colour of water we find some interesting remarks. 
The author considers that “ after deducting the influence of the 
. reflected light of the sky or the clouds, the residual special colour 
is directly due to the minute particles suspended in the w r ater.” 
As instances of the colourless nature of very pure, even though 
deep, waters, he mentions the Aachensee in the Tyrol, and the 
Anapo near Syracuse. “ Floating in a boat over the fountain of 
Cyane, the source of the Anapo, and looking down at the pebbles, 
seen with microscopic distinctness 40 or 50 feet below, was sug- 
gestive of sitting in the car of a balloon.” In comparison with 
these waters he considers the “ green Rhine and the blue Rhone ” 
both lacking in transparency, their different shades of colour 
being due to suspended rock particles. The deepest purple or 
indigo waters he has found in the neighbourhood of dark slaty 
rocks. In limestone districts, and amidst red and deep yellow 
sandstones, the waters are green. The waves of the Atlantic 
along the west coast of Ireland are “ more deeply indigo in tint 
than out at sea,” owing to a vast quantity of suspended dark 
purple rock particles, too small to be separately visible, even with 
the aid of the microscope. Waters flowing through peat bogs 
are brownish when shallow, but pitchy black when deep, , and 
especially when seen in the shade. This colour the author 
believes is actually due to a kind of pitch derived from 
the peat. 
With reference to the profusion of cherries, currants, and 
gooseberries in Norway, Mr, Williams seeks the cause in the 
absence of sparrows and other strong-billed birds. Hence he 
dissents from those writers who denounce sparrow-clubs, and he 
defends the English farmer against the charge of being an 
ignorant and indiscriminating murderer of all small birds. To 
a great extent he is here in the right : the exportation of sparrows 
to Australia was a folly and a crime only one degree smaller than 
the introduction of rabbits, goats, and swine into uninhabited 
islands, or the proposal to supply a “ constitutional check ” to 
the first of these three destructive animals by the importation of 
polecats. The chief difficulty of the casg is the impracticability 
of at once extirpating the sparrows and preserving the inseCt- 
