220 NATURAL SCIENCE. March. 



a residuum which quite possibly may be explained by the discovery of 

 some new animal. Oudemans' own theory is given with a considerable 

 amount of confidence, in some 50 pages towards the end of the book, 

 and on page 516 an ideal sketch of the animal is produced. It is a 

 Pinnipede to be called Megophias niegophias (Raf.), Oud. ; and a phylo- 

 genetic table of its relations with other Pinnipedes, living and extinct, 

 is given. It is very possible that a large Pinnipede may exist, but, 

 on carefully going through the characters suggested for it by this 

 author, it is difficult to see that he has been guided in his selection 

 from reports by any sounder principle than relying on what appeared 

 to suit his hypothesis, and rejecting or explaining away inconvenient 

 ones. Further notice of this book I leave to a literary contributor. 



P. C. M. 



II. 



The attitude of the nineteenth century, social as scientific, towards 

 the unknown may be summed up by the remark made by a lady 

 member of the upper ten concerning those less happily situated in the 

 social scale — " I don't know them : they don't exist." In the face of 

 this attitude Dr. Oudemans has presented the public with a treatise 

 of no less than 592 pages on our old friend the sea-serpent. We are 

 warned on the title-page that the little volume contains reports of 

 187 appearances, " including those of the appendix," but we are not 

 told what the appendix of the serpent is, and there are no special 

 reports on appearances of his tail. The author much deplores the 

 fact that his illustrations are not due to the unlying kodac. Never- 

 theless, the reader does not lose by this little omission in the baggage 

 of observant travellers. It has been the means of providing portraits 

 of the sea-serpent such as we feel assured no camera yet invented 

 could have produced. The most impressive of these is one compiled 

 by Messrs. Renard, pcre et fils, who combinedly took observations one 

 moonlight night during a voyage on the high seas in 1881. The 

 result is the portrayal of a dragon worthy the sublimest efforts of Sir 

 Augustus Harris. We fancy even our own patron saint would have 

 quailed before it, unless, indeed, following the advice given by Dr. 

 Oudemans, he had armed himself with "explosive balls and harpoons 

 loaden with nitro-glycerine." This particular specimen possessed 

 not only teeth, " sharp, enormous, and white," but a phosphorescent 

 tongue and an eye that looked backwards. Probably that eye also 

 winked, for Dr. Oudemans includes both description and drawing 

 under the heading of " Cheats and Hoaxes " — a section sternly dealt 

 with at the beginning of the book. However, in the next chapter, 

 entitled " W^ould-be Sea-Serpents," the illustrations are not to be 

 outdone, in spirit and conception, by mere cheats and hoaxes, and 

 in fig. 12, Linens longissimus, Sow., we find something really worth 

 looking at. Chapter iv. consists of reports and papers on the appear- 

 ances of sea-serpents in various parts of the world. These are mostly 

 compiled by naval officers, and a few — a very few — scientists. The 

 Church, however, is not unrepresented, and we would not like to call 

 in question the evidence of the Archbishop of Upsala, writing in 1555 ; 

 but surely the Archbishop's illustration is the gem of the collection. 

 The sea-serpent is depicted in the act of swallowing a sailor, and we 

 can only charitably suggest that the original sketch was intended as a 

 representation of Jonah's unfortunate experience. Among so much 

 documentary evidence, it is difficult to discriminate critically. Even 

 Milton is pressed into the service, quotations being given in " Reports 



