THE GREAT UNKNOWN. 



the Isle of Sheppey. The largest of these an- 

 cient British snakes was twenty feet in length ; 

 but there is no evidence that they were ma- 

 rine. 



"The sea saurians of the secondary periods of 

 geology have been replaced in the tertiary and 

 actual seas by marine mammals. No remains of 

 Cetaoea have been found in lias or oolite, and no 

 remains of Plesiosaur, or Ichthyosaur, or any 

 other secondary reptile, have been found in Eocene 

 or later tertiary deposits, or recent, on the actual 

 sea-shores; and that the old air-breathing sauri- 

 ans floated when they died has been shewn in the 

 Geological Transactions, (vol. v., second series, 

 p. 512). The inference that may reasonably be 

 drawn from no recent carcase or fragment of such 

 having ever been discovered, is strengthened by 

 the corresponding absence of any trace of their 

 remains in the tertiary beds. 



'Now, on weighing the question, whether creat- 

 ures meriting the name of 'great sea-serpent' do 

 exist, or whether any of the gigantic marine 

 saurians of the secondary deposits may have con- 

 tinued to live up to the present time, it seems to 

 me less probable that no part of the carcase of 

 such reptiles should have ever been discovered in 

 a recent or unfossilised state, than that men 

 should have been deceived by a cursory view of a 

 partly submerged and rapidly moving animal, 

 which might only be strange to themselves. In 

 other words, I regard the negative evidence from 

 the utter absence of any of the recent remains of 

 great sea-serpents, krakens, or Eiialiosaurin, as 

 stronger against their actual existence, than the 

 positive statements which have hitherto weighed 

 with the public mind in favour of their existence. 

 A larger body of evidence from eye-witnesses 



an 



