The Sea-Serpent 105 



that no serpent has a fin, either dorsal or caudal, and the 

 only known marine animal from 20 to 30 feet in length 

 which could swim at from 12 to 14 miles an hour was 

 Phoca proboscidea. This, by the action of its low-set pectoral 

 paddles, could raise at pleasure its head and the forepart 

 of its body above water. He doubted the existence of a 

 ' mane/ for the Lieutenant had not observed this. Both 

 the form and the colour of the part visible agreed with the 

 above-named seal, and nothing else but the large terminal 

 fin would be seen, and that only occasionally. So he 

 thought the supposed sea-serpent was a large species of 

 that seal. A letter from Sir C. Lyell was afterwards read, 

 stating that, since the last meeting, he had seen the vertebrae 

 from Stronsa, which had belonged, as Prof. Owen had said, 

 to Squalus maximus. Possibly, as the latter had suggested, 

 we might account for the length, 60 feet, by supposing 

 two specimens to have been washed ashore and their bones 

 arranged as a single skeleton. 1 But such a shark is not 

 likely to have frightened fishermen, nor did its aspect 

 agree with those seen in Norway and in the St. Lawrence 

 in 1845, and so often prior to that in the United States 

 northern seas, so he was not satisfied that the sea-serpent 

 of the north, though doubtless neither ophidian nor reptilian, 

 could have been a well-known kind of shark only 30 or 

 35 feet long. 2 



1849. At the igth meeting (March 27th) Colonel Sykes 

 read a letter from Dr. Buist, of Bombay, stating that as the 

 meteorological observations indicated such a general uni- 

 formity (the barometer in 1843 standing at 29-824 inches, 

 in 1844 at 29-801 inches, in 1845 at 29-815 inches, and in 

 1846 at 29-816 inches, the curves, daily, weekly, and hourly 

 being often coincident), he doubted whether, though it 

 would be well to continue observing, it was worth while 

 publishing anything more than the anomalies of the 

 weather. Colonel Sabine, however, thought it would not 



1 This seems a rather improbable hypothesis. 



- A good recent summary of the Sea Serpent question is given by H. N, 

 Hutchison, Extinct Monsters, etc. (1910), page 315. 



