394 SEA MONSTERS UNMASKED. 



original force and character, and of the honestly drawn 

 points which furnish proofs of its identity. 



Pontoppidan records other supposed appearances of the 

 sea serpent, but from the date of his history I know of no 

 other account of such an occurrence until that of an animal 

 " apparently belonging to this class," which was stranded 

 on the Island of Stronsa, one of the Orkneys, in the year 

 1808: 



" According to the narrative, it was first seen entire, and measured 

 by respectable individuals. It measured fifty-six feet in length, and 

 twelve in circumference. The head was small, not being a foot long 

 from the snout to the first vertebra ; the neck was slender, extending 

 to the length of fifteen feet. All the witnesses agree in assigning it 

 blow-holes, though they differ as to the precise situation. On the 

 shoulders something like a bristly mane commenced which extended 

 to near the extremity of the tail. It had three pairs of fins or paws 

 connected with the body; the anterior were the largest, measuring 

 more than four feet in length, and their extremities were something 

 like toes partially webbed. The skin was smooth and of a greyish 

 colour; the eye was of the size of a seal's. When the decaying 

 carcass was broken up by the waves, portions of it were secured (such 

 as the .skull, the upper bones of the swimming paws, &c.) by Mr. 

 Laing, a neighbouring proprietor, and some of the vertebrae were 

 preserved and deposited in the Royal University Museum, Edinburgh, 

 and in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, London. An 

 able paper," says Dr. Robert Hamilton, in his account of it,* "on 

 these latter fragments and on the wreck of the animal was read by the 

 late Dr. Barclay to the Wernerian Society, and will be found in Vol. I. 



\ 



FIG. 18. THE "SEA SERPENT" OF THE WERNERIAN SOCIETY. (Facsimile.) 



of its Transactions, to which we refer. We have supplied a wood-cut 

 of the sketch " (of which I give a facsimile here) "which was taken at 



* Jardine's Naturalists' Library: 'Marine Amphibia,' p. 314. 



