THE LARGEST LIVING CREATURES I39 



elements, alligators, huge snakes, and giant lizards, usually 

 in various combinations, all of which were vastly more numer- 

 ous in the past than now and all of which were greatly feared. 



Huge creatures in the ocean when not recognized were com- 

 monly assumed to be related to the terrible dragons on the 

 land and hence endowed with reptilian features and designated 

 as sea-serpents or sea-dragons. 



In the last twenty years we have heard less and less about 

 the sea-serpent. The size of ships has rapidly increased, and 

 steamers have gradually replaced the saihng craft. There has 

 been no change in the creatures of the sea; but the change in 

 our vantage point for observing them from the low and inse- 

 cure wave- washed deck of a small sailing boat to the high, 

 comfortable, secure, and relatively dry deck of a much larger 

 steamer has removed the element of fear and hence dulled the 

 imagination so that sailors are now able to study calmly and 

 report correctly what they see. 



Most sea-serpents when examined carefully resolve them- 

 selves into giant squid or cuttle-fish; but large sharks swim- 

 ming in pairs one behind the other, whales, troops of dolphins 

 and porpoises, and sometimes other creatures have also been 

 described as sea-serpents. 



The element of size in any creature always incites our curi- 

 osity. Mere size alone is always interesting, more especially 

 in a creature larger than ourselves. But before we mention 

 the giants of the animal kingdom let us state that the half 

 way point between the largest of the land animals, the elephant, 

 and the smallest, the most minute among the protozoans, is 

 represented by a creature perhaps a httle smaller than the 

 blow-fly, and furthermore that all the animals we have to 

 fear the most, our most inveterate and our deadhest enemies, 

 are smaller than the blow-fly. 



In certain groups, such as the birds, all the individuals of a 

 given kind are of nearly the same size when fully grown, though 

 the adult size of the two sexes differs more or less, the males 

 being usually larger than the females, but smaller in such 



