262 SNAKES. 



turtles have this power, and I see no valid reason to doubt but that there may 

 and do exist in the unknown regions of the ocean, creatures so constructed. 



* It may be argued that if such animals still live, they must from time to time 

 die, and their bodies would float, and their carcases would be found, or parts of 

 them would wash on shore. To this I say: however reasonable such arguments 

 may appear, most animals that die or are killed in the water, sink at first to the 

 bottom, where they are likely to have the flesh and soft parts devoured by other 

 animals, such as Crustacea, fishes, etc. etc., and sinking in the deep, the bones, 

 being heavier than the other parts, may soon become imbedded, and thus con- 

 cealed from i^ight.' ^ 



It was gratifying to me to find my own ideas of hiberna- 

 tion thus supported, the above allusion to the probability of 

 temporary repose in marine reptiles being the first I had met 

 with. 



Mr. Henry Lee, in the same issue, reminds us that the ex- 

 istence of gigantic cuttle-fish was popularly disbeheved until 

 within the past five or six years, during which period several 

 specimens — some of them fifty feet in total length — have 

 been taken, and all doubts upon the subject have been re- 

 moved. He argues, also, that during the deep-sea dredgings 

 of H.M. ships Lightning,. Porcupine, and Challcjiger, many 

 new species of mollusca, supposed to have been extinct ever 

 since the Chalk epoch, were brought to light, and that there 

 were brought up by the deep - sea trawlings from great 

 depths fishes of 2mknoivn species^ which could not exist near 

 the surface ozuing to the distension and rupture of their air- 

 bladder luhen removed from the pressure of deep zvater. 



Forcibly suggestive are such facts of still further undis- 

 covered denizens of the deep ! And as to what they are, 

 fish, mammal, or reptile, or a compound of either two or all 

 three of these, why doubt any possibility when we know that 

 on land are similarly complicated organisms which so lately 

 have perplexed our most able physiologists? Take, for 



