434 SEA MONSTERS UNMASKED. 



seemed to some writers on this subject to be wanting an 

 animal having a long snake-like neck, a small head and 

 a slender body, and propelling itself by paddles.* 



The similarity of such an animal to the Plesiosaurus of 

 old was remarkable. That curious compound reptile, which 

 has been compared with "a snake threaded through the 

 body of a turtle, is described by Dean Buckland, in his 

 Bridgewater Treatise, as having " the head of a lizard, the 

 teeth of a crocodile, a neck of enormous length resembling 

 the body of a serpent, the ribs of a chameleon, and the 

 paddles of a whale." In the number of its cervical vertebrae 

 (about thirty-three) it surpassed that of the longest-necked 

 bird, the swan. 



The form and probable movements of this ancient saurian 

 agree so markedly with some of the accounts given of the 

 ' great sea serpent," that Mr. Edward Newman advanced 

 the opinion that the closest affinities of the latter would be 

 found to be with the Enaliosauria, or marine lizards, whose 

 fossil remains are so abundant in the oolite and the lias. 

 This view has also been taken by other writers, and empha- 

 tically by Mr. Gosse. Neither he nor Mr. Newman insist 

 that the " great unknown " must be the Plesiosaurus itself. 

 Mr. Gosse says, " I should not look for any species, scarcely 

 even any genus, to be perpetuated from the oolitic period 

 to the present. Admitting the actual continuation of the 

 order Enaliosauria, it would be, I think, quite in conformity 



* It must be noted, however, that in almost every case, except that 

 of the Osborne, the paddles were supposed, not seen, and were invented 

 to account for an animal of great length progressing at the surface of 

 the water at the rate of twelve to fifteen miles an hour without its being 

 possible to perceive, upon the closest and most attentive inspection, 

 any undulatory movement to which its rapid advance could be ascribed. 

 As the great calamaries were unknown, their mode of swift retrograde 

 motion, by means of an outflowing current of water, was of course 

 unsuspected. 



