3i8 APPENDIX 







the tortoises and the serpents." (This is quoted by Mr. Lee in a 

 footnote.) 



"Professor Agassiz, too, is adduced by a correspondent of the 

 Zoologist (p. 2395), as having said concerning the present existence of 

 the Enaliosaurian type, that ' it would be in precise conformity with 

 analogy that such an animal should exist in the American seas, as he 

 had found numerous instances in which the fossil forms of the old 

 world were represented by living types in the new.' 



"On this point, Mr. Newman records in the Zoologist (p. 2356), an 

 actual testimony which he considers ' in all respects the most interesting 

 natural history fact of the present century.' He writes 



" ' Captain the Hon. George Hope states that when in H.M.S. Fly, 

 in the Gulf of California, the sea being perfectly calm, he saw at the 

 bottom a large marine animal with the head and general figure of the 

 alligator, except that the neck was much longer, and that instead of 

 legs the creature had four large flappers, somewhat like those of 

 turtles, the anterior pair being larger than the posterior. The creature 

 was distinctly visible, and all its movements could be observed with 

 ease ; it appeared to be pursuing its prey at the bottom of the sea. 

 Its movements were somewhat serpentine, and an appearance of annu- 

 lations, or ring-like divisions of the body, was distinctly perceptible. 

 Captain Hope made this relation in company, and as a matter of 

 conversation. When I heard it from the gentleman to whom it was 

 narrated, I inquired whether Captain Hope was acquainted with those 

 remarkable fossil animals, Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri, the supposed 

 forms of which so nearly corresponded with what he describes as 

 having seen alive, and I cannot find that he had heard of them ; the 

 alligator being the only animal he mentioned as bearing a partial 

 similarity to the creature in question.' 



"Unfortunately, the estimated dimensions of this creature are not 

 given. 



"That negative evidence alone is an unsafe basis for argument 

 against the existence of unknown animals, the following illustrations 

 will show : 



"During the deep-sea dredgings of H.M.S. Lightning, Porcupine, 

 and Challenger, many new species of mollusca and others, which had 

 been supposed to have been extinct ever since the Chalk, were brought 

 to light ; and by the deep-sea trawlings of the last-mentioned ship 

 there have been brought up from great depths fishes of unknown 



