S24i THE GREAT UNKNOWN. 



feet/ This is the only part of the description, however, 

 which seems to me to be so uncertain as to be inadmis- 

 sible, in an attemj^t to arrive at a right conclusion as to 

 the nature of the animal. The more certain characters of 

 the animal are these : — Head with a convex, moderately- 

 capacious cranium, short obtuse muzzle, gape of the 

 mouth not extending further than to beneath the eye, 

 which is rather small, round, filling closely the palpebral 

 aperture ; colour, dark brown above, yellowish white be- 

 neath ; surface smooth, without scales, scutes, or other 

 conspicuous modifications of hard and naked cuticle. 

 And the captain says, ' Had it been a man of my ac- 

 quaintance, I should have easily recognised his features 

 with my naked eye.' Nostrils not mentioned, but indi- 

 cated in the drawing by a crescentic mark at the end of 

 the nose or muzzle. All these are the characters of the 

 head of a warm-blooded mammal — none of them those 

 of a cold-blooded reptile or fish. Body long, dark brown, 

 not undulating, without dorsal or other ap23arent fins ; 

 ' but something like the mane of a horse, or rather a 

 bunch of sea- weed, washed about its back.' The charac- 

 ter of the integument^ would be a most important one 

 for the zoologist in the determination of the class to 

 which the above-defined creature belonged. If an opinion 

 can be deduced as to the integuments from the above in- 

 dication, it is that the species had hair, which, if it was 

 too short and close to be distinouished on the head, 

 was visible where it usually is the longest, on the middle 

 line of the shoulders or advanced part of the back, 



