318 APPENDIX 
the tortoises and the serpents.” (This is quoted by Mr. Lee in a 
footnote.) 
‘**Professor Agassiz, too, is adduced by a correspondent of the 
Zoologist (p. 2395), as having said concerning the present existence of 
the Enaliosaurian type, that ‘it would be in precise conformity with 
analogy that such an animal should exist in the American seas, as he 
had found numerous instances in which the fossil forms of the old 
world were represented by living types in the new.’ 
“On this point, Mr. Newman records in the Zoologist (p. 2356), an 
actual testimony which he considers ‘in all respects the most interesting 
natural history fact of the present century.” He writes— 
***Captain the Hon. George Hope states that when in H.M.S. Fly, 
in the Gulf of California, the sea being perfectly calm, he saw at the 
bottom a large marine animal with the head and general figure of the 
alligator, except that the neck was much longer, and that instead of 
legs the creature had four large flappers, somewhat like those of 
turtles, the anterior pair being larger than the posterior. The creature 
was distinctly visible, and all its movements could be observed with 
ease; it appeared to be pursuing its prey at the bottom of the sea. 
Its movements were somewhat serpentine, and an appearance of annu- 
lations, or ring-like divisions of the body, was distinctly perceptible. 
Captain Hope made this relation in company, and as a matter of 
conversation. When I heard it from the gentleman to whom it was 
narrated, I inquired whether Captain Hope was acquainted with those 
remarkable fossil animals, Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri, the supposed 
forms of which so nearly corresponded with what he describes as 
having seen alive, and I cannot find that he had heard of them; the 
alligator being the only animal he mentioned as bearing a partial 
similarity to the creature in question.’ 
“Unfortunately, the estimated dimensions of this creature are not 
given. 
“That negative evidence alone is an unsafe basis for argument 
against the existence of unknown animals, the following illustrations 
will show :— . 
“During the deep-sea dredgings of H.M.S. Lightning, Porcupine, 
and Challenger, many new species of mollusca and others, which had 
been supposed to have been extinct ever since the Chalk, were brought 
to light; and by the deep-sea trawlings of the last-mentioned ship 
there have been brought up from great depths fishes of unknown 
