THE GREAT UNKNOWN. 



seas in so many directions. Considering, too, the 

 tides and currents of the ocean, it seems still more 

 reasonable to suppose that the dead sea-serpent 

 would be occasionally cast on shore. However, I 

 do not ask for the entire carcase. The structure 

 of the back-bone of the serpent tribe is so peculiar, 

 that a single vertebra would suffice to determine 

 the existence of the hypothetical Ophidian; and 

 this will not be deemed an unreasonable request 

 when it is remembered that the vertebrae are 

 more numerous in serpents than in any other 

 animals. Such large blanched and scattered bones 

 on any sea-shore, would be likely to attract even 

 common curiosity; yet there is no vertebra of a 

 serpent larger than the ordinary pythons and 

 boas in any museum in Europe. 



"Few sea-coasts have been more sedulously 

 searched, or by more acute naturalists (witness 

 the labours of Sars and Loven) than those of 

 Norway. Krakens and sea-serpents ought to have 

 been living and dying thereabouts from long be- 

 fore Pontoppidans time to our day, if all tales 

 were true; yet they have never vouchsafed a 

 single fragment of the skeleton to any Scandi- 

 navian collector; whilst the great denizens of 

 those seas have been by no means so chary. No 

 museums, in fact, are so rich in skeletons, skulls, 

 bones and teeth of the numerous kinds of whales, 

 cachalots, grampuses, walruses, sea-unicorns, 

 seals, &c, as those of Denmark, Norway, and 

 Sweden ; but of any large marine nondescript or 

 indeterminable monster they cannot shew a 

 trace. 



"I have inquired repeatedly whether the natural 



history collections of Boston, Philadelphia, or other 



cities of the United States, might possess any 



unusually large ophidian vertebrae, or any of 



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