Sept. 12, 1878] 



NATURE 



519 



exact measurements, which I am sorry for, as the cobra in 

 question measured 6 feet 3 inches in length, a size Col. R. 

 Beddome — no mean authority — assured me is seldom or never 

 surpassed. 



In a work such as Dr. Brehm's, exaggerations in illustrations 

 should be as carefully avoided as misstatements in letterpress. A 

 Natural History that depicted horses the size of elephants would 

 be scoffed at, yet, strange to say, equally glaring absurdities, 

 such as "cobra charming," frequently pass muster. 



Bath, September 10 E. H. Pringle 



The Sea-Serpent Explained 



If you have space for the following, it is so confirmatory of 

 Dr. Drew's experience of an opera-glass dispelling "fond 

 deceits " concerning a sea-serpent, that it may be worth 

 recording. 



One morning in October, 1869, I was standing amid a small 

 group of passengers on the deck of the ill-fated P. and O. ss, 

 Rangoon, then steaming up the Straits of Malacca to Singapore. 

 We were just within sight of the coast of Malacca, and quite 

 out of sight, so far as I remember, of Sumatra. One of 

 the party suddenly pointed out an object on the port bow, per- 

 haps half a mile off, and drew from us the simultaneous ex- 

 clamation of "The sea- serpent ! " And there it was, to the 

 naked eye, a genuine serpent, speeding through the sea, with 

 its head raised on a slender curved neck, now almost buried in 

 the water, and anon reared just above its surface. There was 

 the mane, and there were the well-known undulating coils 

 stretching yards behind. 



But for an opera-glass, probably all our party on board the 

 Rangoon would have been personal witnesses to the existence of 

 a great sea-serpent, but, alas for romance ! one glance through 

 the lenses and the reptile was resolved into a bamboo, root 

 upwards, anchored in some manner to the bottom — a " snag,"iin 

 fact. Swayed up and down by the rapid current, a series of 

 waves undulated beyond it, bearing on their crests dark-coloured 

 weeds or grass that had been caught by the bamboo stem. 



Ignorance of the shallowness of the straits so far from land, 

 and of the swiftness of the oirrent, no doubt led us to our first 

 hasty conclusion, but the story, with Dr. Drew's, shows how 

 prone the human mind is to accept the marvellous, and how 

 careful we should be in forming judgments even on the evidence 

 of our senses. E. H. Pringle 



Bath, September 10 



Dr. Drew's letter in Nature, vol. xviii. p. 489, recalls to 

 my mind a similar phenomenon witnessed by myself and a 

 friend on August 3, while crossing from Grimsby to Rotterdam. 

 It was towards evening, when, looking ahead, we saw, about a 

 mile distant, what appeared to be a long, low, black hull, with- 

 out masts or funnel, moving through the water at enormous 

 speed. After a minute or two it undulated and rose from the 

 surface, and we saw that it was a flight of birds. 



The deception was so complete that I can well believe that at 

 least many of the stories of the sea-serpent have so originated, 

 though I doubt whether all can be explained in this manner. 



Grammar School, Bradford, September 7 C. Bird 



The communication of Dr. Joseph Drew in your issue of 

 yesterday regarding the serpentine appearance of a flock of 

 shags in the English Channel is extremely interesting even as a 

 mere fact regarding the habits of these birds. Will you kindly 

 permit me, however, to point out that Dr. Drew's statement 

 cannot be regarded as explanatory of the sea-serpent's per- 

 sonality? At the most the incident only explains one of a 

 number of serpentine appearances of which porpoises and sun- 

 fishes swimming in line, pieces of wood with trains of sea-weed, 

 &c., are also good examples. There have been placed on record 

 numerous incidents of serpentine forms having been closely in- 

 spected (as in the well-known case of the Dcedalus, or later still of 

 H.M. S. Osborne') where the hypothesis of the serpentine appear- 

 ances assumed by flocks of birds or fishes could not be held as 

 explanatory in any sense. It is with the view of showing that the 

 exact personality of the "sea-serpent" cannot be accounted for 

 by such an incident as Dr. Drew relates, that I venture to pen 

 these remarks ; and as a firm believer from the standpoint of 

 zoology that the large development of the marine ophidians of 

 warm seas offers the true explanation of the ' ' sea-serpent " 



mystery, I would also ask your readers to distinguish carefully 

 between cases in which serpentine appearances have been 

 assumed by ordinary animals, and those in which one animal 

 form has presented itself in the guise of the " great unknown." 

 I am far from contending that a sea-snake developed in the 

 ratio of a giant "cuttle-fish," presents the only solution of 

 this interesting problem. A long tape-fisb, or even a bask- 

 ing shark of huge dimensions, might do duty in the eyes of 

 non-zoological observers for a "sea-serpent." The following 

 cutting from the Scotsman of September 6, indeed, seems 

 explicable only on the tape-fish theory which I have advocated 

 with the persistence of firm belief within the past few years. At 

 the same time zoologists cannot but feel indebted to Dr. Drew, 

 and to those who, like that gentleman, note unwonted appear- 

 ances in ordinary animal life, and communicate such incidents to 

 your columns. Andrew Wilson 



Edinburgh School of Medicine, September 6 



The following is the extract alluded to : — 



"A Baby Sea-Serpent. — From Van Diemen's Land comes 

 news of the capture of a queer fish. It is fourteen feet long, 

 fifteen inches deep from the neck to the belly, tapering two 

 inches to the tail, and eight inches in diameter in the thickest 

 place. There are no scales, but the skin is like polished silver, 

 with eighteen dark lines and rows of spots ninning from the 

 head to the tail each side. There is a mane on the neck twenty 

 inches long, and continues from the head to the tail ; small 

 head, no teeth, protrusive mouth, capable of being extended 

 four inches like a sucker ; eyes flat about the size of a half- 

 crown, and like silver, with black pupils. There are two feelers 

 under the chin, thirty-two inches long. The fish was alive when 

 captured." 



Alpine Flowers 



In the Alps I have found some instances of different forms of 

 floivtrs in plants of the same species, which, as far as I know, 

 have been hitherto undescribed, and of which, therefore, I will 

 give a short notice here. 



Geranium sylvati^um is in one locality near the Albula Pass 

 gynodia'cious, with large-flowered hermaphrodite, and small- 

 flowered female stems, Veratrum album, Dryas cctopetala, and 

 Geum reptans, are in all the localities where I have examined them, 

 androdioecious. Astraniia minor offers a quite peculiar sort of 

 andrcdioecism, some stems bearing, as in other Umbelliferx, in 

 the same umbel hermaphrodite flowers and male ones, other 

 stems producing solely male flowers. Dianthus superbus 

 seems at first sight to exist in three forms: (i) stems with 

 hermaphrodite flowers, being perfectly proterandrous and pro- 

 ducing a moderate quantity of u-hilish pollen ; (2) stems 

 with female flowers containing very conspicuous rudiments of 

 stamens but pollenless anthers ; (3) stems with pistils remaining 

 imperfectly developed and with anthers containing abundance 

 of a brcmn powder. At first sight I thought their flowers 

 to be male, and the brown powder to be pollen grains, but 

 under the microscope the latter proved to consist of grains, the 

 diameter of which is only about one- eighth of that of the 

 pollen grains of the hermaphrodite flowers. I suppose, there- 

 fore, these grains to be the spores of some species of fungus,, 

 and Dianthus superbus to be gynodicecious. 



Beminahaus, August 29 Hermann MUller 



The Microphone 



While studying the relation between the b.ittery power and! 

 the sounds heard through the microphone, I found, when the- 

 latter was included in the circuit between two pairs of elements, 

 that the sound first amplified by the microphone underwent 

 further amplification by the action of the second pair of ele- 

 ments, and when heard through the telephone the volume of 

 sound was considerably augmented. This new fact may perhaps, 

 open up a fresh avenue of research and lead to further develop- 

 ment of Prof. Hughes' beautiful discovery. 



Hull Thomas Rowney 



A Meteor 



While directing a small telescope towards Jupiter, at 9.35 P.M. 

 on the 2nd inst., my attention was attracted by the bright light 

 of what proved to be a large meteor, falling towards the south- 

 western horizon. Its apparent size was two or three times that 



