THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



deep than are dreamt of in your philosophy?' 

 And, freely conceding that point, I have felt bound 

 to give a reason for scepticism as well as faith. 

 If a gigantic sea-serpent actually exists, the species 

 must, of course, have been perpetuated through 

 successive generations, from its first creation and 

 introduction into the seas of this planet. Con- 

 ceive, then, the number of individuals that must 

 have lived, and died, and have left their remains 

 to attest the actuality of the species during the 

 enormous lapse of time, from its beginning, to the 

 6th of August lastl Now, a serpent, being an 

 air-breathing animal, with long vesicular and re- 

 ceptacular lungs, dives with an effort, and com- 

 monly floats when dead; and so would the sea- 

 serpent, until decomposition or accident had 

 opened the tough integument, and let out the im- 

 prisoned gases. Then it would sink, and, if in 

 deep water, be seen no more until the sea rendered 

 up its dead, after the lapse of the aeons requisite 

 for the yielding of its place to dry land— a change 

 which has actually revealed to the present genera- 

 tion the old saurian monsters that were entombed 

 at the bottom of the ocean, of the secondary 

 geological periods of our earth's history. During 

 life the exigencies of the respiration of the great 

 sea-serpent would always compel him frequently 

 to the surface; and when dead and swollen— 



1 Prone on the flood, extended long and large,' 



he would 



1 Lie floating many a rood; in bulk as huge, 

 As whom the fables name of monstrous size, 

 Titanian, or Earth-born, that warr'd on Jove.' 



Such a spectacle, demonstrative of the species if it 



existed, has not hitherto met the gaze of any of 



the countless voyagers who have traversed the 



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