POTENTIALITIES. 325 



more than five feet from me, not touching the sand, but elevated. I could have stood under 

 the ' tlukes of its tail.' 



" The only part of the body that had marks like joints (like in size and shape to a 

 common brick) was also on the dry shore, but resting on the sand ; the great dome-shaped 

 carapace, dull slate-grey, was standing quite five feet high, and so hid its long neck and head 

 from my view, which before it rose I could see as a long shadow in the water. The carapace 

 was smooth and without marks of any sort. The fish-like part of the tail was as glossy and 

 shiny as the head and neck, but of a beautiful silver-grey, shading to white, with either markings 

 or large scales, each bordered with a ridge of white, but if scales, not like those of a fish in 

 position, as the fishes' scales lie horizontally, whilst the Moha's, if scales, lie perpendicularly, 

 each the size of a man's thumb-nail. It had a thick fleshy fin near the end, about three feet 

 from the flukes, and, like them, chocolate-brown. The flukes were semi-transparent ; 1 could see 

 the sun shining through them, showing all the bones very forked. One of the girls asked 

 me if a shark had bitten a piece out of its tail, and the other one wanted to know if I thought 

 it was an alligator ! The fish-like part was quite twelve feet long. 



" All the time the animal was on shore it was perfectly motionless ; at last it gave a 

 curious half-twist to the fluke part of its tail, the movement only reaching just beyond the 

 fleshy fin, and, without disturbing the water in the slightest degree, vanished. I seemed 

 only to have taken one breath when I saw its tail out of the water about the place where 

 the steamer anchors, sending a quantity of fish into the air. I then saw it give a twist of 

 its tail and it disappeared altogether. The black boy saw it on shore the previous Monday, 

 the 9th inst. As I was so close to it for at least half an hour, I was able to study its 

 shape and colouring. In moving about, head and tail were seen alternately above water, 

 but not even the shadow of its great body, and, from the length of that, a spectator could 

 not guess that the head and tail belonged to the same creature, particularly as the colourmg 

 is so dififerent. The parts I did not see were the legs. I stooped down and tried, but in 

 vain, to see them, though the Moha was only standing in a foot of water, but the Black described 

 them as being like an alligator. I wrote to Dr. Ramsay (Sydney) to ask if the Moha was 

 the same creature as the great turtle of New Guinea, of which the Sydney Museum possesses 

 a skeleton, but he said in reply that it was quite unlike, and calls the Moha a tortoise, 

 which I think is correct. Dr. Gunther (of the British, Natural History, Museum) would give 

 _^ioo for the entire animal, ^'50 for part, and a fair price for the head and neck sun-dried." 



In reply to the author's application to Miss Lovell for the fullest information, and, if possible, 

 corroborative testimony concerning the appearance of this remarkable creature, he was furnished 

 with the foregoing account ; and, in addition, with a document setting forth that it had been 

 seen by seven white people and a black youth either on the same occasion, or within a few 

 days' interval of the time that Miss Lovell saw and sketched it on the beach. The signed 

 testimony is as follows : — 



