798 



SEA-SERPENTS. 



SEYMOUR, HORATIO. 



Perhaps the most curious appearance of the 

 sea-serpent was on Aug. 6, 1848, when it was 

 seen by the " Dasdalus," a British frigate home- 

 ward bound from the West Indies. It was 

 first sighted about five o'clock in the afternoon, 

 approached very near the ship, and remained 

 in sight about twenty minutes. Several of the 

 officers and many of the crew saw it very 

 plainly. It was described as an enormous ser- 

 pent, with head and shoulders kept about four 

 feet above the surface, nearly sixty feet in 

 length, dark brown and yellowish white about 

 the throat. 



On July 8, 1875, the officers and crew of the 

 "Pauline" observed three large sperm-whales, 

 and one of them was gripped around the body 



so that the end of the squid's body has been 

 compared to an arrow-head. It is a habit of 

 these squids, the small species of which are 

 met with in some localities in teeming abun- 

 dance, to swim on the smooth surface of the 

 water in hot and calm weather. The arrow- 

 headed tail is then raised out of the water to 

 a height that in a large individual might be 

 three feet or more, and as it precedes the 

 body, which moves at the rate of several miles 

 an hour, it of course looks, to a person who 

 has never heard of an animal going tail first at 

 such speed, like the creature's head. Calama- 

 ries or squids of the ordinary size have from 

 time immemorial been among the commonest 

 and best known of marine animals in many 

 seas; but, only a few years ago, any one that 

 expressed his belief in one formidable enough 

 to capsize a boat or to pull a man out of one, 

 was derided for his credulity. We now know 

 that their existence is no fiction, for squids 

 have been captured measuring over fifty feet. 



SERPENT AND WHALE. 



with two turns of what appeared to be a huge 

 serpent. The head and tail appeared to have 

 a length beyond the coils of about thirty feet, 

 and its girth eight or nine feet. The ser- 

 pent whirled the whale round and round, and 

 then suddenly dragged him to the bottom, 

 head first. A rough drawing was made of this 

 extraordinary scene, and a copy of it is here 

 given. 



Numerous appearances of the sea-serpent 

 were reported in 1886; but in no instances 

 were the observers near enough to make new 

 discoveries as to its shape or formation. Va- 

 rious hypotheses have been advanced by scien- 

 tific men to account for these appearances. 

 Thus it has been claimed that a calamary (or 

 giant squid), swimming on the surface of the 

 sea, would present the appearance described 

 by so many observers as peculiar to the great 

 sea-serpent; and it has been urged that it 



GIANT SQUID. 



The sea-serpent has again been supposed to 

 be of the race of some antediluvian monster, 

 and the conjecture that there may be in exist- 

 ence some congeners of these great reptiles is 

 not inconsistent with zoological science ; for it 

 seems not unlikely that some undescribed form 

 exists which is intermediary between the tor- 

 toise and the serpents. 



GIANT SQUID. 



was the same animal, rising to the surface to 

 blow, that was seen by Mr. Egede. 



When swimming, these squids propel them- 

 selves backward by the outrush of a stream of 

 water from a tube pointing in a direction con- 

 trary to that in which the animal is proceed- 

 ing. The tail part, therefore, goes in advance, 

 and the body tapers toward this. At a short 

 distance from the actual extremity, two fiat 

 fins project from the body, one on each side, 



SEYMOUR, HORATIO, nn American statesman, 

 born at Pompey Hill, Onondaga County, N. Y., 

 May 31, 1810 ; died in Utica, Feb. 12, 1886. The 

 Seymour family was among the earliest set- 

 tlors of Hartford, Conn. Henry Seymour, father 

 of Horatio, removed to Onondaga County, N. 

 Y., about the beginning of the century, and in 

 time became one of the leading citizens of the 

 State. He was State Senator, Canal Commis- 

 sioner, member of the State Council of Ap- 



