STRANGE SEA CREATURES. 229 



the iguana, which are closely related to forms which existed 

 in the secondary era, while no traces have been found of 

 them in any of the intermediate or tertiary strata. The 

 chimaera is a case precisely analogous to the supposed case 

 of the enaliosaurus, for the chimaera is but rarely seen, like 

 the suppposed enaliosaurus, is found in the same and absent 

 from the same fossiliferous strata. Agassiz is quoted in the 

 Zoologist, page 2395, as saying that it would be in precise con 

 formity with analogy that such an animal as the enaliosaurus 

 should exist in the American seas, as he had found numerous 

 instances in which the fossil forms of the Old World were 

 represented by living types in the New. In close con- 

 formity with this opinion is a statement made by Captain 

 the Hon. George Hope, that when in the British ship fly, 

 in the Gulf of California, the sea being perfectly calm and 

 transparent, he saw at the bottom a large marine animal, 

 with the head and general figure of an alligator, but the 

 neck much longer, and with four large paddles instead of 

 legs. Here, then, unless this officer was altogether de- 

 ceived, which seems quite unlikely under the circumstances, 

 was a veritable enaliosaurus, though of a far smaller species, 

 probably, than the creature mistaken for a sea-serpent 



As for the absence of remains, Mr. Darwin has pointed 

 out that the fossils we possess are but fragments accidentally 

 preserved by favouring circumstances in an almost total 

 wreck. We have many instances of existent creatures, even 

 such as would have a far better chance of floating after 

 death, and so getting stranded where their bones might be 

 found, which have left no trace of their existence. A whale 

 possessing two dorsal fins was said to have been seen by 

 Smaltz, a Sicilian naturalist ; but the statement was rejected, 

 until a shoal of these whales were seen by two eminent 

 French zoologists, MM. Quoy and Gaimard. No carcase, 

 skeleton, or bone of this whale has ever been discovered. 

 For seventeen hours a ship, in which Mr. Gosse was travel- 

 ling to Jamaica, was surrounded by a species of whale 

 never before noticed 30 feet long, black above and 



