president's address. 135 



testimony of remote classical times to the universality of this be- 

 lief.* Not to dwell on the accounts, plainly fabulous, reported by 

 ^lian, of the Dragons of India and Ethiopia, nor on the history 

 given by several authors of the monstrous serpent which obstructed 

 the troops of Kegulus, in Africa, I would remarli that Pliny, in his 

 8th book, considers that tale credible, because there had been 

 killed on the Vatican Hill, in the time of Claudius, only 20 or 25 

 years before Pliny wrote, a boa-serpent of such dimensions as to 

 have swallowed an infant entire, which was found in the animal 

 when opened. This is nearly contemporary testimony, and is, I 

 think, conclusive of the existence then, in Italy, of some enormous 

 reptile which has now become extinct ; and it countenances my 

 supposition that, in our country, these wild legends of worms and 

 dragons may have their origin in a like physical fact. Aristotle 

 mentions also, in his 8th book, that on the coast of Africa, serpents 

 had been reported to have pursued vessels near the coast, and to 

 have upset them. We have not indeed heard of sea-serpents in 

 the Mediterranean; but I confess my opinion that the evidence 

 we already have on the subject would convince any honest jury- 

 man of the fact of their existence in other seas, though our men of 

 science, from what I think an excess of scepticism, doubt, or rather 

 deny it. I will not fatigue you by the details, but will simply remind 

 you that the existence of some serpent-form monsters of the deep 

 had been attested by three independent bodies of evidence before we 

 had the positive testimony of Capt. M'Quhae, K. N., viz. : the evidence 

 of the witnesses who had observed it in the Scotch Sea Louo-hs: that 

 of the Norwegians, whose testimony is summed up and credited by 



* Since this address was delivered, I have read in the proceedings of our 

 sister society, the "Berwickshire Naturalists' Club," a paper of great 

 ingenuity and research, by Dr. Charles Wilson, on " Linton and its Legends ;" 

 his inference being that, if there were any physical foundation for those stories, 

 it was probably to be found in some accidental denudation of strata presenting 

 to the rude natives, in remote times, skeletons of the Megalosaurus in such 

 perfection and fulness of its giant proportions, as must never be looked for in 

 our days; but, in corroboration of the view 1 have ventured to take, I would 

 cite the Life of the late Mr. Surtees, of Mains for t?i, recently published by the 

 Surtees Society, in which it appears to have been the belief both of Mr. Surtees 

 and Sir Walter Scott that these traditions referred to some extinct animal of 

 the serpent kind inhabiting swamps, it being generally in the neighbourhood of 

 some pool or flooded country that the site of these traditions is placed. — See 

 ^' Surtees Society" vol. xxix., p. 98. 



