358 THE GREAT UNKNOWN. 



neck would probably be projected obliquely, carrying the 

 reptilian head, with an eye of moderate aperture, and a 

 mouth whose gape did not extend behind the eye. Add 

 to this a covering of the body not formed of scales, bony 

 plates, or other form of solidified integument, but a yield- 

 ing, leathery skin, probably black and smooth, like that 

 of a whale ; give the creature a length of some sixty feet 

 or more, and you would have before you almost the very 

 counterpart of the apparition that wrought such amaze- 

 ment on board the Dcedalus. The position of the nostrils 

 at the summit of the head indicates, that, on first coming 

 to the surface from the deaths of the sea, the animal 

 would spout in the manner of the whales, a circumstance 

 reported by some observers of the sea-serpent. 



I must confess that I am myself far more disposed to 

 acquiesce in this hypothesis than in any other that has 

 been mooted. Not that I would identify the animals 

 seen with the actual Plesiosaurs of the lias. None of 

 them yet discovered appear to exceed thirty-five feet in 

 length, which is scarcely half sufficient to meet the exi- 

 gencies of the case. I should not look for any species, 

 scarcely even any genus, to be perpetuated from the oolitic 

 period to the present. Admitting the actual continua- 

 tion of the order Enaliosauria, it would be, I think, 

 quite in conformity with general analogy to find important 

 generic modifications, probably combining some salient 

 features of several extinct forms. Thus the little known 

 Pliosaur had many of the peculiarities of the Plesiosaur, 

 without its extraordinarily elongated neck, while it vastly 



