"In Search of the Unknown", Book 4, by Robert W. Chambers

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Chapters 13-17: The Mystery of the Sphyx

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0:00:00 Chapter 13
0:09:31 Chapter 14
0:40:29 Chapter 15
1:01:56 Chapter 16
1:28:50 Chapter 17
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The letter in chapter 13 being dated 1902 is clearly, based in information in these chapters here, an error, it should have been dated 1904.

Edriophthalma is a disused peracarid (Malacostraca) classification comprising Isopoda and Amphipoda, first proposed by William Elford Leach in 1815.

coquina - a small bivalve mollusk with a wedge-shaped shell which has a wide variety of colors and patterns. Also: a soft limestone of broken shells, used in road-making in the Caribbean and Florida.

marl - a loose or crumbling earthy deposit (as of sand, silt, or clay) that contains a substantial amount of calcium carbonate

"dog with points" is rather a curious phrase, one I've never heard before. I assume it just means a pointing dog, a.k.a. bird dog.

"Cyanide jar" is just that - a jar of cyanide, used in this time period by entomologists for killing insects they wished to collect.

Coontie is a type of cycad (the only one native to North America!), a type of hardy, slow-growing shrub common in south Florida.

elaps - a genus of venomous serpents, giving name to the family Elapidæ, having two nasal plates. (Although it appears the term may be a bit archaic at this point, seemingly replaced by the word elapids?)

the Syachas appear to be fictional, presumably meant to be a native American tribe.

sou'wester could mean either of 1) a long oilskin coat worn especially at sea during stormy weather, or 2) a waterproof hat with wide slanting brim longer in back than in front. The context given here tends to suggest the hat, since a jersey is noted which would otherwise be obscured by a coat.

There is not currently a place named Citron City that I can identify, but obviously Cape Canaveral is a real place. Cape Canaveral is located on a barrier island, and it is unlikely a railroad would have run on to the island a hundred years ago. Today there are some lines that appear to run parallel to the island, but not onto the island, and I'm guessing that would be the best case scenario 100+ years ago as well. A place named Citron City maybe could have existed at the time of the story, but been renamed or merged into another municipality in the intervening years. False Cape is a real place on the barrier island, now part of the space launch facility.

Chapter 17 should have been split into two chapters, as it marks the end of one story (of Professor Farrago and the Spyhx) and the start of a new story (with Professor Holroyd). Up to now, we haven't seen such extensive overlap between stories in one chapter. I wonder why it wasn't done here? Ugh.

There's an Oyster Bay on the north side of Long Island, there's a South Oyster Bay on the south side of the island, but no West Oyster Bay, not as a LIRR station, not as a place name, not as a body of water name. A fiction. There's also no Sand Point, although there is a Sands Point, but that is on the north side of the island. And unsurprisingly, no Pine Inlet either. All fictitious places.

The pictures used are:

Chapter 13: the bathynomus raksasa, and isopod found in Indonesia. Although it was only recently discovered, in 2020, so not one that the narrator would have had in his collection, but it makes for a fun thumbnail!

Chapter 14: a view looking NNW up Canaveral National Seashore by Joneboi, used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en)

Chapter 15: "Everglades National Park" by Matthew Dillon, used here under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)

Chapter 16: "Sunset at 10,000 Islands NWR" by Jim Liestman, used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/)

Chapter 17: "Cypress Dome Gator Hole Everglades National Park Florida" by Kim Seng (https://captainkimo.com/cypress-dome-gator-hole-everglades-national-park-florida/), used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/)

To follow along: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/18668/18668-h/18668-h.htm#XIII

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