102 LEISURE-TIME STUDIES. 



bility, and whether the evidence as to living things having 

 been seen is of trustworthy kind. 



One of the most circumstantially recorded and best- 

 known reports of the appearance of a sea-serpent is that of 

 Captain M'Quhse, who commanded H.M.S. Dccdalus, in 

 1848, and whose case, originally published and commented 

 upon in the Times of that year, may be almost unknoAvn 

 to the present and rising generation of readers. The first 

 announcement in the Times appeared in the form of a 

 paragraph on October 9, 1848, stating that when the 

 Dccdalus was on her passage home from the East Indies, 

 and when between the Cape of Good Hope and St. Helena, 

 the captain and most of the officers and crew, saw an 

 animal, which from its form and shape they assumed to be 

 a sea-serpent. Captain M'Quhse's own statement, contained 

 in his reply to an official inquiry from the Admiralty, gives 

 the date of the marine monster's appearance as 6th August, 

 1848, and its exact habitat, at 5 p.m. of that day, as latitude 

 24 44' S, and longitude 9 22' E. The captain simply 

 states it to be "an enormous serpent, with head and 

 shoulders kept about four feet constantly above the surface 

 of the sea, and, as nearly as we could approximate by 

 comparing it with the length of what our maintop-sail yard 

 would show in the water, there was at the very least sixty 

 feet of the animal a fleur d'eau, no portion of which was,. 

 to our perception, used in propelling it through the water, 

 either by vertical or horizontal undulation." The animal, 

 Captain M'Quhse states, and the observation is important, 

 as bearing on the question of the living nature of the object 

 described, passed the ship, "rapidly, but so close under 

 our lee quarter, that had it been a man of my acquaintance 

 I should easily have recognised his features with the naked 

 eye." The further dimensions of the animal are given as 

 15 or 1 6 inches in diameter "behind the head, which was," 

 continues Captain M'Quhae, "without any doubt, that of 

 a snake," whilst the colour is described as being "a dark 

 brown, with yellowish white about the throat." No fins 



