]88 THE SEA. 



water, and he kept moving it up and down, sometimes showing his enormous neck, which 

 was surmounted with a huge crest in the shape of a saw." 



Another theory was put forward in the London Sun of the 9th July, 1849, by Captain 

 Herriman, of the British ship Brazilian, who, on the 24th February, 1849, was becalmed 

 on almost the same spot that Captain M'Quhse saw his monster while on a voyage from 

 the Cape of Good Hope. 



" I perceived/' wrote Captain Herriman, " something right abeam, about half a mile to the 

 westward, stretched along the water to the length of about twenty-five to thirty feet, and per- 

 ceptibly moving from the ship with a steady sinuous motion. The head, which seemed to be 

 lifted several feet above the water, had something resembling a mane running down to the 

 floating portion, and within six feet of the tail it forked out into a sort of double fin." On 

 approaching in a small boat, however, Captain Herriman discovered that his monster was nothing 

 more formidable than " an immense piece of sea- weed, evidently detached from a coral reef, 

 and drifting with the current, which sets constantly to the westward in this latitude, and which, 

 together with the swell left by the subsidence of the gale, gave it the sinuous snake-like motion." 



In the Times of 5th February, 1858, a letter from Captain Harrington, of the ship 

 Castilian, stating that he and his crew had seen a gigantic serpent on the 12th December, 

 1857, about ten miles N.E. of St. Helena, brought out another witness on the sea-weed 

 hypothesis. This was Captain Fred. Smith, of the ship Pekin, who gave a very similar 

 account to that of Captain Herriman, stating that in lat. 26 S., long. 6 E., on the 

 28th December, 1848, he captured what he believed to be a serpent, but what turned out 

 to be a gigantic piece of weed covered with snaky-looking barnacles. 



This last imputation brought up " An Officer of H.M. ship Daedalus," whose testimony, 

 in the Times of 16th February, 1858, puts hors de combat the sea-weed theory in that 

 renowned case. He states that, " at its nearest position, being not more than 200 yards 

 from us, the eye, the mouth, the nostril, the colour and form, all being most distinctly visible 

 to us. . . my impression was it was rather of a lizard than a serpentine character, as 

 its movement was steady and uniform, as if propelled by Jins, not by any undulatory power." 



That there is some mighty denizen of the vasty deep, sometimes but seldom seen, is 

 more than possible, and highly probable; but to which of the recognised classes of created 

 being can this huge rover of the ocean be referred ? First of all, is it an animal at all ? On 

 two occasions monstrous pieces of weed have been mistaken for the Kraken, but on each 

 occasion the distance from the vessel is estimated at half a mile; while Captain M'Quhse 

 says that he was within 200 yards, and Mr. Davidson within thirty-five yards of the animal. 

 Under these circumstances we may fairly dismiss the sea-weed hypothesis. 



Professor Owen would place the sea-serpent among the mammalia, but Phoca proboscidea 

 is the only seal which will bear comparison with the Daedalus animal in dimensions, it reaching 

 from twenty to thirty feet. The officers declare, however, that at least sixty feet of their 

 animal was visible at the surface. Again, the fore paws of the seal are placed at about 

 one-third of the total length from the muzzle, and yet no appearance of fins was seen. To 

 continue, the great Phoca proboscidea has no mane, the only seals possessing what may be 

 dignified with the title being the two kinds of sea lions the Otaria jubata and Platyrhynchus 

 leoninus which are far too small to come into the count. 



