416 SEA MONSTERS UNMASKED. 



learned Professor, with accurate facts, and not with exaggerated 

 representations, nor with what could by any possibility proceed from 

 optical illusion ; and I beg to assure him that old Pontoppidan having 

 clothed his sea serpent with a mane could not have suggested the idea 

 of ornamenting the creature seen from the Dcsdalus with a similar 

 appendage, for the simple reason that I had never seen his account, or 

 even heard of his sea serpent, until my arrival in London. Some other 

 solution must therefore be found for the very remarkable coincidence 

 between us in that particular, in order to unravel the mystery. 



" Finally, I deny the existence of excitement or the possibility of 

 optical illusion. I adhere to the statements, as to form, colour, and 

 dimensions, contained in my official report to the Admiralty, and I 

 leave them as data whereupon the learned and scientific may exercise 

 the ' pleasures of imagination ' until some more fortunate opportunity 

 shall occur of making a closer acquaintance with the ' great unknown ' 

 in the present instance most assuredly no ghost. 



" P. M'QUH^E, late Captain of H.M.S. Dadalus. 



Of course neither Professor Owen, nor any one else, 

 doubted the veracity or bona fides of the captain and 

 officers of one of Her Majesty's ships ; and their testimony 

 was the more important because it was that of men accus- 

 tomed to the sights of the sea. Their practised eyes would, 

 probably, be able to detect the true character of anything 

 met With afloat, even if only partially seen, as intuitively as 

 the Red Indian reads the signs of the forest or the trail ; 

 and therefore they were not likely to be deceived by any of 

 the objects with which sailors are familiar. They would 

 not be deluded by seals, porpoises, trunks of trees, or 

 Brobdingnagian stems of algae ; but there was one animal 

 with which they were not familiar, of the existence of 

 which they were unaware, and which, as I have said, at 

 that date was generally believed to be as unreal as the sea 

 serpent itself namely, the great calamary, the elongated 

 form of which has certainly in some other instances been 

 mistaken for that of a sea-snake. One of these seen 



