This chapter is one of varied material, and I now pass abruptly from fresh emerald leaflets to the waxy crystals stewed out of the fat of a monster's head. There has seldom been a controversy so entertaining as that between Dr. Bode (the talented director of the Art Gallery of Berlin) and his opponents, in regard to the age of the wax-bust which he purchased not long ago for L8,000 in Bond Street in the belief that it was the work of Leonardo da Vinci. Science has had its share in the examination of the bust. The last scientific contribution to the matter was the discovery by an analytical chemist, Dr. Pinkus, that the waxy mixture of which the bust is composed consists in definite proportion of spermaceti. Now since spermaceti was not used before the year 1700, the bust cannot (say Dr. Bode's opponents) have been made by Leonardo da Vinci, who died in the early part of the sixteenth century. "Nonsense!" reply Dr. Bode's supporters, "Shakespeare makes Hotspur speak of 'parmaceti,' and it was well known to the doctors of Salerno in 1100 A.D., and probably used by the ancients." Nevertheless, the opponents of Dr. Bode are right. I am sorry, because Dr. Bode is, in regard to "works of art," a most able expert, and I think it is better that experts should always be right. Spermaceti was known, probably from classical times onwards, as a rare and precious unguent, "resolutive and mollifying," as M. Pomel, "chief druggist to the late French King Louis XIV," says in his treatise on drugs, translated into English in 1737. It was applied as a liniment for hardness of the skin and breasts, and was also taken internally. Shakespeare's reference to it is "parmaceti for an inward bruise." The fact is it was known and used in small quantity before 1700 A.D. in connection with medicine and the toilet, but was not consumed by the thousand tons a year, as it was after the hunting of the sperm whale or cachalot (_Physeter mecrocephalus_) had been set a-going by the brave fishermen of Nantucket and the Northern Atlantic coast of America in 1690. In 1730 or thereabouts the English and the Dutch also sent out ships to take part in this perilous industry, which is now again, in its dwindled condition, exclusively American. It is the pursuit of by far the biggest and fiercest animal which man has doomed to extinction. Those who enjoy such stories of adventure should read Mr. Bullen's personal narrative, "The Cruise of the Cachalot." It was at the end of the eighteenth century that spermaceti became so abundant in the market that candles of it were manufactured and sold cheaper than those of wax. From about 1860 it was superseded by paraffin and other wax-like products: and it was at its cheapest period, and when it was most widely in use, that Lucas, the English artist, who made many wax busts and statuettes, is known to have mixed it, in the form of "old candles," with beeswax, in order to form the composition which he used in his works. The evidence given by the