256 EXTINCT MONSTERS. 



" 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. FJy, 

 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 

 annulations, or ring-like divisions of the body, was distinctly per- 

 ceptible. 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 

 species, and which could not exist near the surface, owing to the dis- 

 tention and rupture of their air-bladder when removed from the 

 pressure of deep water. 



" Mr. Gosse mentions that the ship in which he made the voyage 



