THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



such peculiar form as to indicate some large and 

 unknown marine animal; but they have received 

 no such specimens. 



"The frequency with which the sea-serpent has 

 been supposed to have appeared near the shores 

 and harbours of the United States, has led to its 

 being specified as the 'American sea-serpent;' yet 

 out of the two hundred vertebrae of every indi- 

 vidual that should have lived and died in the 

 Atlantic since the creation of the species, not one 

 has yet been picked up on the shores of America. 

 The diminutive snake, less than a yard in length, 

 'killed upon the sea-shore, 1 apparently beaten to 

 death, 'by some labouring people of Cape Ann,' 

 United States, (seetheHvo pamphlet, 1817, Boston, 

 page 38,) and figured in the Illustrated London 

 News, October 28, 1848, from the original American 

 memoir, by no means satisfies the conditions of 

 the problem. Neither does the Snccophnrynx of 

 Mitchell, nor the Oplfiogna&hns of Harwood — the 

 one four and a half feet, the other six feet long: 

 both are surpassed by some of the congers of our 

 own coasts, and, like other muraenoid fishes and 

 the known small sea-snake, (Hjrdropbhs,) swim 

 by undulatory movements of the body 



"The fossil vertebrae and skull which were ex- 

 hibited by Mr. Koch, in New York and Boston, as 

 those of the great sea-serpent, and which are now 

 in Berlin, belonged to different individuals of a 

 species which I had previously proved to be an 

 extinct whale; a determination which has subse- 

 quently been confirmed by Professors Miiller and 

 Agassiz. Mr. Dixon, of Worthing, has discovered 

 many fossil vertebrae, in the Eocene tertiary clay 

 at Bracklesham, which belong to a large species of 

 an extinct genus of serpent (Palseophis) , founded 

 on similar vertebrae from the same formation in 

 310 





