32 



LARGE AQUATIC ANIMALS. 



The following j)aper on tlie existence of large animals, 

 (probably fresh water seals) in the upland lakes of Tasmania, 

 prepared by C. Gould, Esq., F.G.S., was, in Mr. Gould's 

 absence, read at the last meeting of the Eoyal Society: — 



I wish to lay before the Society a statement of facts, which 

 is full of interest and surprise, and which will show, if corro- 

 borated by further investigations, that the existence of rare, 

 perhaps undescribed, animals may be generally unknown, and 

 entirely so to science, for long periods after the occupation of 

 a country. 



It may be noted that while easy credence cannot be given 

 to the tales of aboriginals who too often fancy that their 

 only chance of evading the dominating intelligence of their 

 conquerors rests in their endowments of low cunning and 

 mendacity; yet that many of the wonderful stories which such 

 aboriginals relate and which, when handed in turn to those 

 who are unapprcciative of the infinite diversity of the forms of 

 animal life are considered to be mere " traveller's tales," are 

 in reahty entirely true or substantially based upon fact. The 

 investigator of natural science will, therefore, never entirely 

 abandon the enquiry in such cases until some completely 

 satisfactory disproof or explanation has been arrived at, and 

 he will be the more resolved in this upon reflecting that the 

 specific features of the savage intellect consist in the possession 

 of great powers of observation rather than in those of origi- 

 nality or invention. Hence the traditions or myths of uncivi- 

 lized countries are more susceptible of direct tracement to 

 an origin than the transmitted stories of more instructed 

 nations who conserved knowledge under the form of allegory 

 or fable — the true meaning or explanation of which was under- 

 stood only by the few — and has, in many instances been com- 

 pletely buried under the successive increments of time. 



It will be only necessary to instance, as examples upon the 

 one hand, the distorted accounts which have travelled from 

 the interior of Africa, and of Madagascar, of the Ehinoceros, 

 and the Epiornis, and to which we are indebted for the story 

 of the Unicom, and of that most wonderful bird the Eoc. 

 Again the Eastern story of Sinbad familiarizes us with a liberal 

 interpretation of the Chimpanzee or Gorilla under the form 

 of the " Old Man of the Sea." And the Kraken is simply an 

 enormous exaggeration of the gigantic species of cuttle fish 

 known or believed to exist in the Indian Ocean. 



The Anaconda of South America has supplied the Indians 

 of the Amazon with the fable of the " Spirit of the Waters j'* 



