Those dispatches converted the matter from a mere unusual incident into something like a minor sensation. For, according to them, the deposits of glistening gray slime had been left by the tides not only along the Atlantic coast but along the Pacific also, and not only along American shores but upon those of Europe and Asia and Africa, upon all the shores of all earth's seas, in fact. Upon the jungle-bordered beaches of the Philippines, and the cold gray Norwegian shores, and the shelving sands of the Chilean coast, and the rocky cliffs of England, the retreating tides had left the same thick coatings of jelly-like, living slime. The phenomenon, whatever its cause, was world-wide, as those morning dispatches showed, and because of that world-wide scope was accorded a greatly increased space by the majority of that morning's newspapers, seeming extraordinary enough to call for greater attention. And even more extraordinary was it made, later in that day, by the Barr-McMasters controversy concerning it, that acrid dispute of scientists about the phenomenon's causes that stirred even the public into a somewhat greater interest in it. The controversy was precipitated, with surprizing abruptness, by the statement made by Dr. Almeric Barr early on the 26th. It was toward Dr. Barr, whose reputation among contemporary biologists was exceeded only by that of the brilliant Dr. Herbert Munson of the Starford Foundation, that the puzzled newspapers had turned when the glistening deposits had first appeared at New York. They had brought him samples of the stuff, asking his opinion of it, and his curiosity had been so stirred that he had undertaken an analysis of it. It had proved, apparently, an interesting enough analysis, for it was not until the next day that he had given to the waiting journals any summary of it. When that summary was published, though, appearing in the noon editions of that day's papers, it proved a startling one.