io8 LEISURE-TIME STUDIES. 



.animal swimming rapidly through the water, and showing 

 several widely detached black fins. Being alone in a small 

 skiff at the time, I confess to the feeling of caution prompt- 

 ing me to restrain my curiosity and to remain at a safe 

 distance from the animal. My curiosity was, however, 

 speedily dispelled by beholding the apparently long and 

 single animal resolve itself into a few sun-fishes (Orthagoris- 

 tus\ which happened to be rolling over and over in the water 

 in line ; their motions, viewed from a distance, together with 

 the imperfect glimpse I had at first caught of the animals, 

 rendering my former idea of the presence of an elongated 

 moving body all the more realistic. Such cases are, how- 

 ever, not to be placed side by side with the plain accounts 

 of unknown animals of large size having been distinctly 

 seen in latitudes favouring the growth of animals with which 

 we are less familiar, and to the explanation of the affirmed 

 and verified accounts of which we may next direct attention. 



As was naturally to be expected, zoologists began to 

 overhaul their lists on the narration of these tales, with the 

 view of attempting to discover some known form which 

 would correspond with the details and appearances observed 

 and described in the sea-serpent accounts. Could the 

 zoologist point with reason to any single form or to a few 

 animals which might, without any undue liberties being 

 taken either with the animals themselves or with the sea- 

 serpent tales, be regarded as the representatives of the 

 marine monsters? Such was the question propounded for 

 the solution of naturalists in former years, and such empha- 

 tically is the chief question for consideration in the subject 

 as it at present stands. 



The only group of animals to which our attention may 

 be specially directed with the view of finding a zoological 

 solution of the problem, is that of the Vertebrata, the highest 

 group of animals, which possesses the fishes as its lowest, and 

 man and quadrupeds as its highest representatives. Laying 

 aside the class of birds, as including no forms at all allied to 

 our present inquiry, we are left with, speaking generally, three 



