THE ANCIENT PLESIOSAUK. 357 



that term. A lengthened cylindrical form it seems to 

 have ; but, for anything that appears, it may as well be a 

 monstrous eel, or a slender cetacean, as anything. All ana- 

 logies and probabilities are against its being an ophidian. 



It yet remains to consider the hypothesis advanced by 

 Mr E. Newman, Mr Merries Stirling, and "F. G. S.,"* 

 that the so-called sea-serpent will find its closest affinities 

 with those extraordinary animals, the Enaliosauria, or 

 Marine Lizards, whose fossil skeletons are found so 

 abundantly scattered through the oolite and the lias. The 

 figure of Plesiosaurus, as restored in Professor Ansted's 

 Ancient World has a cranium not less capacious or 

 vaulted than that given in Captain M'Quhse's figures ; to 

 which, indeed, but that the muzzle in the latter is more 

 abbreviate, it bears a close resemblance. The head was 

 fixed at the extremity of a neck, composed of thirty to forty 

 vertebrae, which, from its extraordinary length, slender- 

 ness, and flexibility, must have been the very counterpart 

 of the body of a serpent. This snake-like neck merged 

 insensibly into a compact and moderately slender body, 

 which carried two pairs of paddles, very much like those 

 of a sea-turtle, and terminated behind in a gradually 

 attenuated tail. 



Thus, if the Plesiosaur could have been seen alive, you 

 would have discerned nearly its total length at the sur- 

 face of the water, propelled at a rapid rate, without any 

 undulation, by an apparatus altogether invisible, the 

 powerful paddles beneath; while the entire serpentine 



* See supra, pp SI 8, 320. 



