IW THE OCEAN 



scriptions of those which mariners and others 

 claim to have seen, yet unusually large speci- 

 mens of their kind might easily be called ver- 

 itable sea-serpents. 



The strange "Ribbon-Fish" is one such 

 species. It is supposed to be an inhabitant of 

 great depths and only to appear on the surface 

 when sick, or injured, but in reality nothing 

 definite is known of its habits or natural home, 

 as all the specimens hitherto taken have been 

 found floating upon the sea or washed ashore. 

 One individual, nearly twenty feet in length, 

 dashed itself upon a beach in Bermuda and 

 was seen swimming through the water by sev- 

 eral people who stated that it propelled itself 

 by loops or convolutions, exactly as the sea-ser- 

 pent is described as swimming by those who 

 have said they saw this sea-monster. Other 

 ribbon-fish have been taken which were over 

 twenty feet in length, and there is no real rea- 

 son why this fish should not occasionally grow 

 to a size of seventy-five or one hundred feet. 

 If the ribbon-fish does reach such a size there 

 is little doubt that it is the real, or one of the 

 real, sea-serpents. The long filaments near the 



