322 SEA MONSTERS UNMASKED. 



late experienced editor of the Zoologist, Mr. Edward 

 Newman, a man of wonderful power of mind, of great 

 judgment, a profound thinker, and an able writer. At a 

 time when, as he said, " the shafts of ridicule were launched 

 against believers and unbelievers in the sea serpent in a 

 very pleasing and impartial manner," he, in the true spirit 

 of philosophical inquiry, in 1847, opened the columns of 

 his magazine to correspondence on this topic, and all the 

 more recent reports of marine monsters having been seen 

 are therein recorded. To him, therefore, the fullest 

 acknowledgments are due. 



The great cuttles, also, have been the subject of articles 

 in various magazines, notably one by Mr. W. Saville 

 Kent, F.L.S., in the ' Popular Science Review ' of April, 

 1874, and a chapter in my little book on the Octopus, 

 published in 1873, is also devoted to them. In writing 

 of them as the living representatives of the kraken, and as 

 having been frequently mistaken for the " sea serpent," 

 my deductions have been drawn from personal knowledge, 

 and an intimate acquaintance with the habits, form, and 

 structure of the animals described. It was only by 

 watching the movements of specimens of the "common 

 squid " (Loligo vulgaris\ m& the "little squid" (L. media), 

 which lived in the tanks of the Brighton Aquarium, that 

 I recognised in their peculiar habit of occasionally 

 swimming half-submerged, with uplifted caudal extremity, 

 and trailing arms, the fact that I had before me the " sea 

 serpent " of many a well-authenticated anecdote. A mere 

 knowledge of their form and anatomy after death had 

 never suggested to me that which became at once apparent 

 when I saw them in life. 



It is a pleasure to me to acknowledge gratefully the 

 kindness I have met with in connection with the illustra- 



