208 



an approximate knowledge of the former important element, which 

 is generally indeterminable from ordinary observations at a single 

 apparition. 



No very careful measures appear to have been made of the com- 

 pression experienced by the present comet ; but contrasting such as 

 have been procured during a month before the perihelion passage, 

 with Mr Hartnup's important daylight observation on that occasion, 

 a period may be anticipated of certainly more than 180 years. 



Tuesday, Sd January 1854. 



Right Rev. BISHOP TERROT, Vice-President, in the 



Chair. 



The following Communication was read : — 



On the supposed Sea-Snake, cast on shore in the Orkneys in 

 1808, and the animal seen from H.M.S. Daedalus, in 1848. 

 By Dr Traill. 



The discussions which arose about four years ago on the animal 

 reported to have been seen on 6th August 1848, by Captain 

 M'Quhae, the officers and crew of H.M.S. Dsedalus, in the South- 

 ern Atlantic, between the Cape of Good Hope and St Helena, about 

 300 miles off the African shore, recalled my attention to the ma- 

 terials I had collected respecting the vast animal cast ashore on 

 Stronsey, one of the Orkneys, in 1808. 



I was not there at the time, but copies of the depositions made 

 by those who had seen and measured it were transmittted to me by 

 order of Malcolm Laing, Esq., the historian of Scotland, on whose 

 property it was stranded ; and I obtained other notes from several 

 individuals resident in Orkney. 



The evidence of the most intelligent persons who had seen and 

 measured the animal was carefully collected, and copies of it were 

 transmitted by Mr Laing to Sir Joseph Bankes, and other natural- 

 ists. Soon afterwards Mr Laing sent, through his brother, the late 

 Gilbert Laing Meason, to the museum of our university the skull 

 and several vertebrae. The cartilaginous omoplates, to which a por- 

 tion of the pectoral fin, or wirig, as it was termed by the natives, 

 were afterwards sent to Edinburgh, where I saw and examined them. 



