THE GREAT SEA SERPENT. 381 



is being swallowed feet foremost, or possibly being ejected 

 head first, by an enormous sea monster, having the chest 

 and fore-legs of a horse, a long arching neck, with a mane 

 at its base, near the shoulders, a head like nothing in 

 nature, but having hair upon and beneath the cheeks, the 

 hinder portion of the body being that of a serpent of 

 prodigious length, undulating in several vertical curves. 

 This sculpture appears to have been cut between the 

 beginning and the middle of the third century, about 



FIG. 12. JONAH AND THE SEA MONSTER. 

 From the Catacombs of Rome. 



A.D. 230, but it probably represents a tradition of far 

 greater antiquity. 



We will now consider the accounts given by Scandinavian 

 historians, of the sea serpent having been seen in northern 

 waters. Here, I suppose, I ought to indulge in the usual 

 flippant sneer at Bishop Pontoppidan. I know that in ab- 

 staining from doing so I am sadly out of the fashion; but I 

 venture to think that the dead lion has been kicked at too 

 often already, and undeservedly. Whether there be, or be not, 

 a huge marine animal, not necessarily an ophidian, answering 

 to some of the descriptions of the sea serpent so called 

 Pontoppidan did not invent the stories told of its appear- 

 ance. Long before he was born the monster had been 

 described and figured ; and for centuries previously the 

 Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, and Fins had believed in its 



