.So6 



NATURE 



[March 30, 1893 



references make it difficult to detach any one from the 

 rest, or to gather the substance of the author's specula- 

 tions on any one part of his subject. In the preface he 

 tells us that he had been urged to pubHsh not a reprint, 

 but a systematic treatise. It is, we think, greatly to be 

 regretted that he has not found it possible to take this 

 advice. The labour of compression and of proper 

 co-ordination would no doubt have been great, but 

 it would have been amply repaid by the increased 

 currency given to the author's views. As it is, we fear 

 that the fate of these weighty volumes will be that students 

 of the stamp which Mr. Heaviside would most wish to 

 attract will turn over his pages, picking up a suggestion 

 here and there, will then work out things in their own 

 way, and finally return to the present treatise to ascertain 

 how far their results have been anticipated. And this is 

 really matter for regret, for almost every page bears the 

 impress of a vigorous and original mind, and we cannot 

 doubt that the author's speculations would have exercised 

 a considerable influence on the progress of electromag- 

 netic theory, if it had not been for the disadvantageous 

 form under which they are presented. H. L. 



THE GREAT SEA-SERPENT. 

 The Great Sea-Serpent. An Historical and Critical 

 Treatise. With Reports of 187 Appearances (including 

 those of the Appendix), the Suppositions and Sugges- 

 tions of Scientific and Non-scientific Persons, and the 

 Author's Conclusions. With 82 illustrations. By A. 

 C. Oudemans, Jzn. Published by^the Author, October, 

 1892. (London : Luzac and Co.) 



IN a large, well-printed volume, Dr. A. C. Oudemans, 

 Jzn., publishes what he is pleased to call "an 

 historical and critical treatise " about the " Great Sea- 

 Serpent," with the reports of 187 appearances, the suppo- 

 sitions and suggestions of scientific and non-scientific 

 persons, and the author's conclusions. 



It is impossible, however, to treat this laborious work 

 as a scientific treatise, nor will the author, we trust, be 

 vexed with us when we add that it is the very last form 

 of a work that we would have expected from the pen of 

 the learned Director of the Zoological Gardens at the 

 Hague, for when one gets by practise to know the utter 

 worthlessness of the descriptions given by even well-edu- 

 cated persons of often the most easily diagnosed forms of 

 life — and surely experience of this nature must often have 

 come across Dr. Oudemans's path — one cannot fail to 

 regard as positively hopeless the reconciling of a mass of 

 such crude observations as fill the pages of this book. 

 The very trouble and no doubt anxiety caused by reading 

 over such a pitiful series of records has to some extent 

 affected the author, for he quotes as the motto for his 

 volume the extremely sensible words of a very able 

 biologist, whose chief fault it was not to leave a greater 

 record of his wisdom for posterity, to the effect " That it 

 is always unsafe to deny positively any phenomena that 

 may be wholly or in part inexplicable," meaning thereby 

 to deny a phenomenon because it cannot be explained, 

 and then in the immediately following preface he 

 compares himself to Chladni, who took the trouble 

 to collect all the accounts concerning observations of 

 NO. 122 2, VOL. 47] 



"meteoric stones," and showed the immense number 

 of facts that he had found out about them. In this 

 one word fact-^at:/— lies a great world of difference 

 between Chladni's meteoric stones and Oudemans's sea- 

 serpents. The meteoric stones could be seen and 

 handled, the sea-serpents " are very shy, and it is not 

 advisable to approach them with a steamboat." " Instan- 

 taneous photographs of the animal will alone convince 

 zoologists, while all their reports and pencil drawings 

 will be received with a shrug of the shoulders " ; this 

 latter sentence, which precedes the preface, makes one 

 shudder at the amount of " reports and pencil drawings" 

 contained in the six hundred following pages. 



And yet, perhaps, this work is not altogether without 



its value. From the middle of the sixteenth century — when 



Olaus Magnus wrote about " a very large serpent of a 



length of upwards of 200 feet and twenty feet in diameter, 



which lived in rocks and holes near the shore of Bergin " 



— until this very present hour all sorts and manners 



I of gigantic forms have been reported about by 



I sailors and others, and even pencil drawings of them 



• have been made, and the collecting together and printing 



of such a series of records forms as strange a chapter of 



! the science known by the people as has ever made its 



1 appearance. 



There is but little necessity of insisting on the need 

 j of experience in seeing ere one can describe what is 

 seen, nor on the need of a power of describing, 

 what one correctly sees so that the description may 

 be applicable, nor need one wonder that such powers 

 of seeing and describing were not to be found united 

 in the many seagoing worthies whose extraordinary 

 narratives crowd the pages of this volume. But what 

 are we to say about the capacity for belief ta 

 be found in the compiler of this work, who con- 

 cludes his task by naming a form he has never seen,. 

 Megophias inegophias (Raf.) Oud., and further thinks 

 that a Phylogenetic table, which he gives, " will in a 

 practical manner show the rank which, in my opinion,, 

 sea-serpents occupy in the system of nature " .'' 



This volume contains an account of the "literature" on. 

 the subject of sea-serpents ; a detailed record of the 

 various accounts and reports concerning observations of 

 sea-serpents chronologically arranged and thoroughly 

 discussed ; and criticisms on the papers written on the 

 same subject ; next the various explanations hitherto 

 given, and lastly the author's own conclusions — these he 

 divides into " fables, fictions, exaggerations and errors,'' 

 and what he is pleased to call " facts." Among the fic- 

 tions he regards the belief that the sea-serpent " casts 

 its skin, as common snakes do, and that it is born on 

 land " ; among the exaggerations that it has '' a tail fully 

 a hundred and fifty feet in length " ! among the errors 

 " that there are two species of sea-serpents, or that there 

 are several species of them all belonging to the same 

 genus " ; or that " it ever takes [mistakes] a boat for one 

 of the other sex." , 



As to the facts, which may be — it is well to note — 

 " inferred from what is reported" we find enumerated 

 among them the external characters of the sea-serpent, 

 its dimensions, form, and skin. Of its internal charac- 

 ters " it is not astonishing that we don't know much," 

 yet it is clear " that if the animal opens its mouth there 



