Junk Jo, 1S65,] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE • 



555 



must have alwavs been limited, ovou wheu siirroundiiig conditions 

 favoured their existence." 



Why limited ? which of course means " relatively small." Uow do 

 we know thac ihe laud was not very much more extensive then ? 

 The seas may have been deeper, thus leaving more bod exposed ; 

 or, the earth may have been much greater iu diameter iu those 

 remote epochs (?). Moiuitaiu chains are caused, I believe, by the 

 shrinkage of the earth, and consequent creasing of her hide ; the 

 Alps were thrust up in this way in relatively recent limes ; I fear 

 paradox, but it does not seem altogether incredible that the surface 

 was much greater before the older chains arose. At any rate, the 

 \-irgiu soil, unexhausted by tillage and cities, must have loft far 

 larger feeding-grounds for the land monsters than has ever existed 

 in liistorical times. 



Mr. Procter goes on — " the powers of the human race at the 

 present time would be fatal to the existence of these unwieldy 

 monsters." 



How do we know they were unwieldy ? I can conceive a savant, 

 ten thousand years hence, concluding that the elephant must have 

 been unwieldy, and that hence he perished. The only way in which 

 we could war with land-monsters would be by artillery ; which we 

 have possessed but a few ccntm-ies. In the previous ones I think 

 a battalion of Saurians (with its due complement of Ught dragons 

 — Pterodactyls — ) would at any time have given a very good 

 account of any human army. (Xearly thirty years ago the Eev. 

 D. Haigh wrote a big book to show that tho numerous legends of 

 dragons — St. George's, and the Wautly one, and many another — 

 can only be accounted for by supposing that stray pterodactyls, 

 d'C, did survive into historical times, and were, in the usual course, 

 masters of the situation. I think this very probably true.) 



But, not to theorize, has man, even now, ever extirpated any- 

 thing r In this France, where I write, — over populated, highly 

 cultivated, — keen sportsmen, bent on success — they have been 

 striving for centuries might and main to stamp out, not tho Ptero- 

 dactyl, which could " take a sight " at them from balloon-range, 

 but bears, boars, and wolves. Do what they will, these beasts 

 swarm still. Why is this ? France, on the whole, is as flat, culti- 

 vated, and populated as England ; yet in England these beasts of 

 prey have been extirpated. I think the reason is that the climalu of 

 France is much mere genial and stimulating than ours, tlins in- 

 creasing the fecundity of the fauna. Imagine the tropical warmth 

 and the giant flora of the long-past ages ; and it seems rash to 

 hazard an opinion as to the relative numbers of the extinct races. 



These become extinct (we can guess) only through failm-e of 

 sufficient food ; the sea has maintained its monsters, because its 

 supplies are far greater ; and, if we exclude the sea, it cannot surely 

 be doubted for a moment that our " ten largest species " of beasts 

 would not even come near the smallest of the ten largest of olden 

 time. See 2 Cor. li., 19. Hallyaebs. 



THE SEA-SEEPENT. 



[1789] — I quite agree mth yotir remarks in Knowledge, April 3, 

 1885 : " Much valuable evidence concerning the sea-serpent is 

 suppressed by the liippant sneering of the class of writers who 

 require no other qualification 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 g-ibbeted as fools and liars if they do." Now 

 for confirmation. On Wednesday, July 12, 1876, we, passengers on 

 board the steamship El Dorado, saw off Jebel Zagar, iu the Eed 

 .-^ea, the following appearance in front of a bay in the large island. 



The three lengths were estimated by Captain T. C. Kerr at 50 ft. 

 • ach, and they lay in slightly churned water, at the end of a 

 <■ mooth, semicircular wake, coming in our direction, thus : 



Every one on dock, and uiaiiy called up, saw tho sight. Whin 

 wo reached tho position in the lower sketch tho three lengths sunk 

 out of sight simultancoushj, and at tho same time a largo thresher 

 sprang into the air, and fell back into tho water with a great 

 splash. 



1 at once drew up a narrative of what wo had seen, with a sketch, 

 which Captain Kerr and every eyewitness countersigned, and at 

 Colombo posted it to tho Illvstratcd London News, who suppressed 

 it, nor could my agents got it published elsewhere. 



Last trooping season a local paper, tho Pioneer, mentionod that 

 tho trooper Crocodile had seen tho soa-sorpout off Jobel /.agar 

 (where wo had soon it). I sent my narrative in contumation, and 

 it was suppressed. 



Tho lamented Frank Auckland, in " Notes and Jottings from 

 Animal Life," exhibits on page -102 a woodcut of tho sea-serpent as 

 seen iu Loch Ilourn. The greater part of the animal is figured, 

 but we only saw throe lengths. E. F. II. 



Morar, May 22, 1885. 



LETTEES EECEIVED AND SHOET ANSWEES. 



James Gillespie. Your facts and flgures are alike utterly wrong, 

 and your inferences from them equally fallacious. You ask for my 

 opinion ; there you have it as succinctly as I can give it. — Com- 

 MK.NTATOR. Letter on Evolution, &c., iu type. Tho other ouo sup- 

 pressed, as calculated to hurt tho feelings of living people. Please 

 write on one side of the paper only. Your MS. closely written on 

 both sides of the sheet puts the compositors in a most evil temper, 

 and really docs afford a valid excuse for typographical errata. — 

 A. 13. Biggs. See p. -ISG. — E.NijuiKEit. You talk about "the ordi- 

 nary equatorial telescope," by which you presumably mean the 

 Fraunhofcr, or German form, with the telescope at one end of tho 

 declination axis and tho declination circle at tho other. You will 

 find an intelligible illustration of this on p. 15 of " Simms on the 

 Achromatic Telescope." Your declination axis should rest in 

 Y's at the ends of an arm on tho top of and at right angles to 

 tho polar axis. At one end of the declination axis is a cradlo 

 which carries the telescope, to the other the declination 

 circle (in my own equatoreal) is rigidly fixed so aa to rotato 

 with the axis. Its verniers arc attached to the fixed frame-work 

 carrying the Y's. I can give no further explanation here without 

 illustrating it with working drawings. — Senex. Ail that happens 

 when sunlight passes through sodium vapour generated near tho 

 observer's eye is a notable darkening of the already existing D lines 

 in it. Naturally, the more of such vapour the light passes through 

 the more it will be absorbed. — Miss Kate H. Chandleb. The 

 address at which the Ammoniaphone is procurable appeared on the 

 advertisement sheet of the very number which contained my reply 

 to you. I never see the advertisements myself, and was unaware 

 that this would appear.— H. A. Bulley. You trench too much 

 upon purely theological ground for me to insert your letter. — 

 Edwakd Butlek, W. Udal & Co., Eaphael Tuck & Sons. Ee- 

 ceived. — T. H.Elliott. Wholly nnsuited to tho pages of a scientific 

 periodical. — Henry Bkettell invites the attention of " Hallyards" 

 to the fact that in the Xlllth Chapter of his "Other Worlds 

 than Ours," the Conductor of this journal distinctly states that space 

 must be infinite. — F. W. Eudlek. Eeceived with thanks. — C. E. 

 Doyle. The Eeligious Tract Society publish a volume ou "Plants," 

 iu five sections— " The Seed," " The Leaf," " The Flower," "The 

 Fruit," " The Grass." These are issued separately at a very low 

 rate, and the last section comes the nearest to what you apparently 

 require of any book I am familiar with.— Fbedk. T. Goodman. I 

 have communicated with the reviewer, who says, " I will copy tho 

 title-page of Mr. Wooton's book verbatim. It is, ' Mimesis 

 Inquieta.' By Edwin Wooton. Eeprinted from the Journal of 

 Psyehological Medicine, Vol. VIII., Part 2. Edited by Lyttleton S. 

 Forbes Winslow, M.B., D.C.L., Lecturer on Mental Diseases, 

 Charing Cross Hospital. London ; Bailliere, Tindall, and Cox, 

 King William-street, Strand." I cannot understand publishers re- 

 pudiating all knowledge of a work on the title-page of which their 

 names are so conspicuously printed. — Hallyards asks Mr. Butler 

 if he can tell him the name of a buil-coloured spider with three 

 depressions on its back, and its body ending in two humps or 

 corners at the sides. " There were," adds our correspondent, 

 "many bug flowers growing ou the spot." — Eev. S. Wagenhals. 

 JForwarded. — W. Thatcher. The mean diameter of the earth is 

 7,912-28 miles; that of the moon 2,10306. Hence it would take 

 nearly 49 moons to make up one globe the size of tho earth. See 

 paragraph in capital letters which concludes those at the head of 

 the Correspondence Columns. 



In consequence of the growing scarcity of lumber, corrugated 

 iron is now being a good deal used in the United States. 



