The works of Edgar Allan Poe; newly collected and edited, with a memoir, critical introductions, and notes, by Edmund Clarence Stedman and George Edward Woodberry; the illustrations by Albert Edward Sterner.

TALES OF PSEUDO-SCIENCE

"It is, in fact, very surprising, my dear queen,
that you omitted, hitherto, these latter adventures of
Sinbad. Do you know I think them exceedingly
entertaining and strange?"
The king having thus expressed himself, we are
told, the fair Scheherazade resumed her history in
the following words:
"Sinbad went on in this manner with his narrative -' I thanked the man-animal for its kindness, and
soon found myself very much at home on the beast,
which swam at a prodigious rate through the ocean;
although the surface of the latter is, in that part of
the world, by no means flat, but round like a pomegranate, so that we went —so to say —either up hill
or down hill all the time.'"
"That, I think, was very singular," interrupted the
king.
"Nevertheless, it is quite true," replied Scheherazade.
" I have my doubts," rejoined the king; "but, pray,
be so good as to go on with the story."
"I will," said the queen. "'The beast,' continued
Sinbad, 'swam, as I have related, up hill and down
hill, until at length we arrived at an island, many
hundreds of miles in circumference, but which, nevertheless, had been built in the middle of the sea by a
colony of little things like caterpillars. "1
" Hum!" said the king.
" ' Leaving this island,' said Sinbad "-(for Scheherazade, it must be understood, took no notice of hei
husband's ill-mannered ejaculation)- "'leaving this
island, we came to another where the forests were
l The Corallites.
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