THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



form of head, even of certain fishes, he would not 

 say, — "Yes, it was something like that." 



There does not seem, then, any sufficient evi- 

 dence that the colossal animal seen from the 

 Dwdalus, and on other occasions, is a serpent, in 

 the sense in which zoologists use that term. A 

 lengthened cylindrical form it seems to have ; but, 

 for anything that appears, it may as well be a 

 monstrous eel, or a slender cetacean, as anything. 

 All analogies and probabilities are against its be- 

 ing an ophidian. 



It yet remains to consider the hypothesis ad- 

 vanced by Mr. E. Newman, Mr. Morries Stirling, 

 and "F. G. S.,"* that the so-called sea-serpent 

 will find its closest affinities with those extraordi- 

 nary animals, the Enaliosauria, or Marine Liz- 

 ards, whose fossil skeletons are found so abun- 

 dantly scattered through the oolite and the lias. 

 The figure of Plesiosaurus, as restored in Pro- 

 fessor Ansted's "Ancient World" has a cranium 

 not less capacious or vaulted than that given in 

 Captain M'Quhae's figures; to which, indeed, but 

 that the muzzle in the latter is more abbreviate, 

 it bears a close resemblance. The head was fixed 

 at the extremity of a neck, composed of thirty to 

 forty vertebrae, which, from its extraordinary 

 length, slenderness, and flexibility, must have been 

 the very counterpart of the body of a serpent. 

 This snake-like neck merged insensibly into a com- 

 pact and moderately slender body, which carried 

 two pairs of paddles, very much like those of a 

 sea-turtle, and terminated behind in a gradually 

 attenuated tail. 



Thus, if the Plesiosaur could have been seen 

 alive, you would have discerned nearly its total 

 length at the surface of the water, propelled at a 



* See supra, pp. 299, 301. 

 334 



