The opinion of a great mass of biologists was curtly summed up late in that afternoon by Professor Theodore McMaster, biologist-in-chief of one of the great Massachusetts universities. "While Dr. Barr is undoubtedly right in assuming that great quantities of protoplasm have in some way appeared in all earth's seas," he stated, "his theory that those masses have formed suddenly out of the sea's inorganic elements is, with all respect, a crazy one. It is true that in the earth's youth such great protoplasmic masses did form thus from the elements of sea-silt, but we know that their process of formation, their change from inorganic to organic living matter, required eons in itself to complete, so slow was it. This hypothesis, therefore, that the same great process has taken place on a world-wide scale within a day or so is patently absurd. My own theory is that great masses of protoplasm have existed from the remote past on the sea's floor, and that some subterranean or submarine convulsion has thrown them up to be scattered by the tides upon all earth's coasts." This new theory, it must be admitted, found much greater support in biological circles than the more radical one of Dr. Barr, but it was roundly criticized by the latter. The presence of protoplasm in great masses on the sea's floor, he pointed out, had never been detected by any of the great oceanographic expeditions of the past, and the stupid hypothesis of a submarine convulsion could hardly be held when there was no slightest seismographic evidence of such a convulsion having taken place within the last weeks. Dr. Barr was supported in these criticisms by a number of fellow biologists, and so acrid had become the exchange of opinions by the next day, the 27th, that one of the great scientific societies, the World Science Association, stepped in. It proposed to settle the question of the phenomenon's causes to the satisfaction of public and scientists alike by appointing a committee of research to investigate it, to be headed by Dr. Herbert Munson of the Starford Foundation, the most noted biologist of the day. This was a proposition acceptable to all, for the cold, massive Dr. Munson's competence and scientific impartiality were unquestioned. The World Science Association found, however, to its disappointment, that the brilliant biologist had been absent from the Starford Foundation for some months. He had established a laboratory at Cone Island, a little isle of rock and sand off the north Maine coast, it was stated, and was engaged in research there with a small group of scientists, which included Dr. Albert Labreau, a famous bio-chemist; Harlan Kingsford, electro-dynamics expert of the American Electric Company; Dr. Herman Krauner, the noted German bio-physicist, whose studies of the biological effects of radio-active vibrations had been the subject of much discussion; and Dr. Richard Mallett, a rising young cytologist, who was also of the Starford Foundation.