274 



♦ KNOWLEDGE 



[April 3, 1885. 



they usually perish soon after thus visiting the surface. 

 Thespecimen at the Zoological Gardens is about five feet long, 

 however, so that it is quite a good-sized worm. Here, then, 

 is a case where a creature, the description of which excited 

 as much ridicule as that of the sea-serpent, is found not 

 only to exist in large numbers, but to be amenable to the 

 customary treatment extended by our kindly race to the 

 inferior races : we have captured a specimen and keep it on 

 show. 



Yet those who formerly laughed at the earthworm laugh 

 now about the fancied sea-serpent. They laugh so con- 

 sumedly, and make so much noise over it — the laughter of 

 such folk being "as the crackling of thorns under a pot" — 

 that, as my friend Mr. W. Mattieu Williams points out, 

 and as I can confirm, " much valuable evidence concerning 

 the sea-serpent is suppressed by the flippant sneering of the 

 class of writers who require no other qualitieation than 

 ignorance of the subject on which they write. Scores, 

 perhaps hundreds, of trustworthy mariners of all ranks, in 

 both the naval and mercantile services, have seen what 

 they believe to be such a creature, but they refuse to 

 publish any account of their observations, knowing they 

 will be insulted, and publicly gibbeted as fools and liars if 

 they do." 



The foolish laughed in the same way over the kraken, as 

 you point out, aud the monster they rejected as impossible 

 has been killed and measured. Whether the sea-serpent, 

 or any creature whose prey is chiefly sought at a consider- 

 able distance below the surface, will ever be captured or 

 killed is very doubtful. But their existence ought never 

 to have been regarded as doubtful after the evidence ga- 

 thered in Massachusetts in 1817, and the report of the 

 captain of the Dcedalus. There are probably several varie- 

 ties of sea-creatures which look like serpents, and among 

 the.se varieties some may quite probably be really ser- 

 pentine. But some of the supposed sea-serpents must have 

 veally propelled themselves otherwise than as serpentine sea- 

 ereatures do. For they moved rapidly along the surface 

 without perceptible undulations, and nothing but concealed 

 paddles could have urged them on in this way. In my 

 article on " Strange Sea Creatures," which appeared eleven 

 years ago in The tlentlemans Mayar.ine, several singular 

 inhabitants of the sea — and in particular a monstrous 

 skate seen in the East ludies — are described, and evidence 

 given to show that even among comparatively familiar 

 species new varieties are from time to time being dis- 

 covered. Thus, though no sea serpent so large as the Sea 

 Orm or Sea Worm, described by Bishop Pontoppidan as 

 six hundred feet in length, have as yet been seen, it does 

 not follow that none such exist, albeit, I cannot doubt that 

 the good Bishop's accounts are very largely exaggerated. 

 He was not quite so foolish as the modern critic, who, 

 though he perhaps has never left his native town, under- 

 takes to contradict men who describe what they have seen. 

 But I fear he erred as far in the opposite direction. The 

 boa constrictor and the condor have been described in such 

 terms by comparatively modern travellers (as Humboldt 

 has showu) as would suggest creatures akin to the serpent 

 which weut for Sindbad, and the roc which also adorns 

 Sindbad's narrative and appears elsewhere in talps of the 

 East. But to exaggerate is one thing, to invent is another. 

 The man who is foolish enough to lie about his travelling ex- 

 periences is not capable of inventing a new animal worth five 

 minutes' consideration ; but, on the other hand, the man 

 who, being sensible, is honest and truthful, is yet very 

 apt to err in the way of unintentional exaggeration. I 

 think poor Capt. Drevar's narrative of a long-necked sea 

 monster v/hich captured in its folds and took down a sperm 

 whale was a little exaggerated, though he and his mates 



swore to the truth of the story before a magistrate, and he 

 himself was most unfairly punished by his employers for 

 telling what he had seen — he was, in fact, ruined for life. 

 ("I would not tell about it," said an old salt to Capt. 

 Drevar, " if I saw five hundred sea-sarpints.") But I no 

 more believe that these men would have invented such an 

 animal if they could, or could have invented it if they 

 would, than I believe that an utterly ignorant man could 

 have devised the famous Lunar Hoax — the clever story 

 respecting a powerful telescope showing living creatures in 

 the moon. Yet that story did not, as was alleged, take in 

 Arago ; no one acquainted with optical laws could have 

 been deceived by it for an instant. To imagine that 

 Sailors could accomplish the far more difficult feat of 

 inventing a new kind of animal, without immediately 

 exposing their ignorance to every one acquainted with the 

 laws of comparative anatomy, is to imagine the impossible. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF CLOTHING. 



By W. Mattieu Williams. 

 v.— THE COOLING ACTION OF THE SKIN. 



IX my last I suggested that the carbonic acid which is 

 evolved from the surface of the skin may be a product 

 of internal combination of solid or liquid oxygen with solid 

 or liquid carbon. As this may appear paradoxical, I will 

 discuss the question further. 



That such combustion of these elements in a solid form 

 may occur internally, i.e., with exclusion of atmo.spheric 

 air, we have many familiar examples. The case of gun- 

 powder is one ; gun-cotton, dynamite, and many other 

 explosives are others. The source of the oxygen in g>in- 

 powder is the saltpetre, a compound of nitrogen, potas- 

 sium, and oxygen, in which the chemical bonds that hold 

 the oxygen to the nitrogen are so weak that a temperature 

 of about G00° Fab., aided by "the predisposing afiinity " 

 of another substance ready to combine with oxygen is 

 sufficient to efiect the dissociation of the oxygen from the 

 nitrogen. In gunpowder we have two such substances, 

 sulphur and charcoal, both of which, when tbey combine 

 with oxygen, produce gaseous compounds, the sudden 

 expansion of which elTects the explosion. Gun-cotton and 

 dynamite are similar. In these we have hydro-carbors — 

 such as cellulose and glycerine — that have been so treated 

 with nitric acid that we have the loosely-held compound of 

 nitrogen and oxygen still more intimately associated with 

 the hydro-carbon, and still more easily dissociated with 

 similar result. 



We know that combustion [i.e., combination of such 

 combustibles as carbon and hydrogen with oxygen) is 

 taking place throughout the body ; but it is not explosive 

 combustioD, nor flaming combustion, but slow combustion, 

 producing only the moderate temperature of " animal 

 heat," and that the oxygen effecting this combustion is 

 supplied by the lungs, with possibly some aid from the 

 skin. If this combustion were local, if it took place at the 

 lungs, where the oxygen of the air enters the body, the 

 lungs should bear the same relation to the body as our 

 fireplaces bear to the house ; the lungs should be a centre 

 of excessive heat, distributed from that centre. 



But this is not the case. The lungs are not, as some 

 teachers have said, " the fireplace of the body." Com- 

 bustion is going on in the lungs, but no more so than in 

 other parts, the temperature of the body being approxi- 

 mately equal throughout. I say "approximately," because 

 there are variations, but these variations are not dependent 

 upon proximity to the lungs, but to the work being done 



