412 SEA MONSTERS UNMASKED. 



I am too sensible of the inadequacy of the characters which the 

 opportunity of a rapidly passing animal * in a long ocean swell ' enabled 

 them to note for the determination of its species or genus. Giving 

 due credence to the most probably accurate elements of their descrip- 

 tion, they do little more than guide the zoologist to the class which 

 in the present instance is not that of the serpent or the saurian ; but 

 I am usually asked after each endeavour to explain Captain M'Quhse's 

 sea serpent, ' Why should there not be a great sea serpent ? ' often, 

 too, in a tone which seems to imply, ' Do you think, then, there are no 

 more marvels in the deep than are dreamt of in your philosophy ? ' 

 And, freely conceding that point, I have felt bound to give a reason 

 for scepticism as well as faith. If a gigantic sea serpent actually 

 exists, the species must of course have been perpetuated through suc- 

 cessive generations, from its first creation and introduction into the 

 seas of this planet. Conceive, then, the number of individuals that 

 must have lived and died, and have left their remains to attest the 

 actuality of the species during the enormous lapse of time from its 

 beginning to the 6th of August last. Now a serpent, being an air- 

 breathing animal, with long vesicular and receptacular lungs, dives 

 with an effort, and commonly floats when dead ; and so would the 

 sea serpent until decomposition or accident had opened the tough 

 integuments, and let out the imprisoned gases. Then it would sink, 

 and, if in deep water, be seen no more until the sea rendered up its 

 dead, after the lapse of the aeons requisite for the yielding of its place 

 to dry land a change which has actually revealed to the present 

 generation the old saurian monsters that were entombed at the bottom 

 of the ocean, of the secondary geological periods of our earth's history. 

 During life, the exigencies of the respiration of the great sea serpent 

 would always compel him frequently to the surface ; and, when dead 

 and swollen, 



1 Prone on the flood, extended long and large,' 

 he would 



' Lie floating many a rood : in bulk as huge, 

 As whom the fables name of monstrous size 

 Titanian or earth-born that warred on Jove.' 



Such a spectacle, demonstrative of the species if it existed, has not 

 hitherto met the gaze of any of the countless voyagers who have 

 traversed the seas in so many directions. Considering, too, the tides 



