220 PLEASANT WAYS IN SCIENCE. 



The thick neck, passing into an inflexible trunk, the longer 

 and coarser hair on the upper part of which would give rise 

 to the idea " explained by the similes above cited " (of a 

 mane or bunch of sea-weed), the paddles would be out of 

 sight ; and the long eddy and wake created by the propel- 

 ling action of the tail would account for the idea of a long 

 serpentine body, at least for this idea occurring to one 

 " looking at the strange phenomenon with a sea-serpent in his 

 mind's eye." "It is very probable that not one on board 

 the Dadalus ever before beheld a gigantic seal freely swim- 

 ming in the open ocean." The excitement produced by the 

 strange spectacle, and the recollection of " old Pontoppidan's 

 sea-serpent with the mane," would suffice, Professor Owen 

 considered, to account for the metamorphosis of a sea 

 elephant into a maned sea-serpent 



This was not the whole of Professor Owen's argument ; 

 but it may be well to pause here, to consider the corrections 

 immediately made by Captain M'Quhae ; it may be noticed, 

 first, that Professor Owen's argument seems sufficiently to 

 dispose of the belief that the creature really was a sea-ser- 

 pent, or any cold-blooded reptile. And this view of the 

 matter has been confirmed by later observations. But few, 

 I imagine, can readily accept the belief that Captain M'Quha 

 and his officers had mistaken a sea-elephant for a creature 

 such as they describe and picture. To begin with, although 

 it might be probable enough that no one on board the 

 Dxdalus had ever seen a gigantic seal freely swimming in 

 the open ocean a sight which Professor Owen himself had 

 certainly never seen yet we can hardly suppose they would 

 not have known a sea-elephant under such circumstances. 

 Even if thc-y had never seen a sea-elephant at all, they would 

 surely know what such an animal is like. No one could 

 mistake a sea-elephant for any other living creature, even 

 though his acquaintance with the animal were limited to 

 museum specimens or pictures in books. The supposition 

 that the entire animal, that is, its entire length, should be 

 mistaken for 30 or 40 feet of the length of a serpentine neck, 



