THE GREAT UNKNOWN. 



a marvel ; but the creative powers of the human 

 mind appear to be really very limited, and, on all 

 the occasions where the true source of the 'great 

 unknown' has been detected— whether it has 

 proved to be a file of sportive porpoises, or a pair 

 of gigantic sharks— old Pontoppidan's sea-serpent 

 with the mane has uniformly suggested itself as 

 the representative of the portent, until the mys- 

 tery has been unravelled. 



"The vertebrae of the sea-serpent described and 

 delineated in the Wernerian Transactions, vol.. i., 

 and sworn to by the fishermen who saw it off the 

 Isle of Stronsa, (one of the Orkneys,) in 1808, 

 two of which vertebrae are in the Museum of the 

 College of Surgeons, are certainly those of a great 

 shark, of the genus Sehiclw, and are not distin- 

 guishable from those of the species called 'basking- 

 shark,' of which individuals from thirty feet to 

 thirty-five feet in length have been from time to 

 time captured or stranded on our coasts. 



"I have no unmeet confidence in the exactitude 

 of my interpretation of the phenomena witnessed 

 by the captain and others of the Dwd&hia. I am 

 too sensible of the inadequacy of the characters 

 which the opportunity of a rapidly passing ani- 

 mal, 'in a long ocean swell,' enabled them to 

 note, for the determination of its species or genus. 

 Giving due credence to the most probably accurate 

 elements of their description, they do little more 

 than guide the zoologist to the class, which, in 

 the present instance, is not that of the serpent or 

 the saurian. 



"But I am usually asked, after each endeavour 

 to explain Captain MQuhae's sea-serpent, 'Why 

 should there not be a great sea-serpent? 1 — often, 

 too, in a tone which seems to imply, 'Do you 

 think, then, there are not more marvels in the 

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