Nessie and Co.

Like a steel-blue knife blade pressed flat into the heathery Scottish highlands lies 22 1/2-mile Loch Ness. Natives of the district have for centuries been seeing kelpies, bogies, wills-o'-the-wisp. Relatively young, relatively real to the outside world is "Nessie," the lake's mysterious monster, "seen" every season since 1933.

Last week, Captain Donald John Munro, R.N., C.M.G., opened the 1938 season by issuing a prospectus for Loch Ness Monster Co. Captain Munro announced that he would soon issue shilling shares to finance active research. He proposes to build three lookout towers, each equipped with a telephoto camera, range finder, stop watch, powerful binoculars, sound apparatus like that used for detecting the presence of submarines. L. N. M. Co. will determine Nessie's size, her speed of travel, and whether she is, as various eyewitnesses and scientists have declared: 1) an elephant seal which swam in from the North Sea via the Caledonian Canal; 2) a hippopotamus; 3) a 50-ft. prehistoric reptile with a whiskery pinhead and eight scaly humps; 4) a giant squid; 5) "an abomination with a three-arched neck"; 6) a cold-blooded crocodile; 7) a cool fabrication.

Captain Munro is a 69-year-old sea dog who retired from the Royal Navy after 30 years' service, enough action in foreign parts to become a qualified interpreter in Burmese, Hindustani, Swahili. His naval training prepared him specifically for Nessie, for during the War he devised and carried out all British harbor defense against hostile submarines. Last week his round, disappointed-looking face was brightening with hope, not for shareholders ("they may never get a return on their money"), but for the fair name of science: "It is time," said he, "that the scientific world was taking The Thing seriously, and I have made this move with that purpose in view."

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