'THE GREAT SEA SERPENT: 249 



Ribbon-fish, strings of porpoises and other cetaceans, long- 

 lines of sea-birds on the surface of the waves, even logs of 

 drifting wood or bamboo, with bunches of seaweed doing 

 service as 'manes' or 'fins,' have in turn, and by the aid of the 

 imagination, been dubbed ' the sea serpent ' again and again. 

 These may be dismissed by the mere mention of a few such 

 as examples. For instance, in Nature, vol. xviii., 1878, Dr. 

 Dean describes a reported ' sea serpent,' which resolved 

 itself into a flight of birds. E. H. Pringle describes the 

 serpentine appearance of a bamboo swaying up and down, 

 which at a distance had deceived the beholders into the idea 

 of the sea serpent ; others explained that long lines of birds' 

 or of sea-weeds had again similarly deceived sailors. In 

 Land and Water, Sept. 22, 1877, we read that the crew of 

 the barque Aberfoyle, off the coast of Scotland, thought they 

 really had got one this time, and approaching the * monster,' 

 lowered and manned a boat, and seized a harpoon to ' catch * 

 the singularly passive creature, which proved to be a mass 

 of ' a sort of jelly-fish description,' some of which they bottled 

 and corked down air-tight ; but, alas ! it ' deliquesced ' ! 



Again, in Nature, Feb. 10, 188 1, an imaginary sea serpent 

 seen from the City of Baltimore (a ship in which the present 

 writer crossed the Atlantic, though unfortunately not on 

 that voyage) was pronounced to be a species of whale, the 

 Ze2iglodo}itia. 



One more out of scores of similar reports, which go to 

 show that if some unknown marine animal of a longish form 

 is caught, those who have anything to do with it immedi- 

 ately label it 'the sea serpent.' In Land and IVater, Au^. 

 24, 1878, Mr. Frank Buckland published a communication 



