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The belief in the existence of a huge marine animal, of an enor- 

 mous length, which has obtained the name of Sea-serpent, is still 

 very general among the Norwegian fishermen, and is said to have 

 been seen lately in some of their ^ords. A singular notice of it was 

 long ago published by Bishop Pontoppidan, in his History of Nor- 

 way ; but, unfortunately, in his pages, it was introduced in the sus- 

 picious company of the Kraken and the Mermaid ; and therefore 

 has been rejected by later naturalists. 



I am satisfied, however, that the extravagant descriptions which 

 northern authors have given of the Sea-serpent, have been founded 

 on the rare appearance of some such animal as that driven on shore in 

 Orkney ; which may also have been the prototype of the dark sublimity 

 of the wondrous sea-snake of the Scandinavian Edda. That in the 

 ocean such animals do exist, has been affirmed by persons worthy of 

 credit. I shall notice an unpublished instance, related to me many- 

 years ago by my intelligent friend, the late Mr Andrew Strang, a 

 gentleman of unblemished honour. " Once, when on a deep-sea fish- 

 ing, he saw pass below his boat, at the depth of eight or ten feet, an 

 enormously long fish, of an eel-shape. It was swimming slowly, with 

 a vermicular motion, and appeared to be at least sixty feet in length." 

 It appeared to take no notice of them ; but they hastily removed 

 from what they considered a dangerous neighbourhood. He stated 

 that he was shy of mentioning this circumstance, "lest the sceptical 

 public should class him with the fable-loving Bishop of Bergen." 

 There is considerable reason to believe that a similar fish has ap- 

 peared more than once on the western coasts of Scotland. 



I shall not here discuss the notices we have, from time to time, 

 received of late years of a great Sea-serpent seen by mariners in 

 crossing the Atlantic to America. Their accounts are generally 

 confused, sometimes evidently fabulous ; and, in some instances, it 

 would seem that the narrators have mistaken a shoal of porpesses 

 or other delphinoid animals, for a huge sea monster. 



The bones exhibited by Koch, at New York and Boston, as those 

 of a fossil Sea-serpent, which were afterwards brought to Berlin, 

 have been proved to be a most disingenuous fraud of the finder, who 

 united the bones of diff'erent individuals of an extinct species of 

 whale ; bones now proved by Professor Muller to belong to animals 

 of very diff'erent ages, and by M. Agassiz " to have been dug up at 

 different localities." Several diminutive snake-like animals have 



