THE GREAT UNKNOWN. 



sea being perfectly calm and transparent, he saw 

 at the bottom a large marine animal, with the 

 head and general figure of an alligator,* except 

 that the neck was much longer, and that instead 

 of legs the creature had four large flappers, some- 

 what like those of turtles, the anterior pair being 

 larger than the posterior. . The creature was dis- 

 tinctly visible, and all its movements could be 

 observed with ease. It appeared to be pursuing 

 its prey at the bottom of the sea. Its movements 

 were somewhat serpentine, and an appearance of 

 annulations or ring-like divisions of the body were 

 distinctly perceptible. Captain Hope made this 

 relation in company, and as a matter of conver- 

 sation. When I heard it from the gentleman to 

 whom it was narrated, I inquired whether Cap- 

 tain Hope was acquainted with those remarkable 

 fossil animals, Ichthyosauri and Plesiosnuri, the 

 supposed forms of which so nearly correspond 

 with what he describes as having seen alive, and 

 I cannot find that he had heard of them,— the 

 alligator being the only animal he mentioned as 

 bearing a partial similarity to the creature in 

 question. *f 



Now, unless this officer was egregiously de- 

 ceived, he saw an animal which could have been 

 no other than an tiii;iUos;iur,—& marine reptile of 

 large size, of sauroid figure, with turtle-like pad- 



* Mr. Marshall, in his interesting " Four Years in Burmah," 

 just published, mentions his having seen an "alligator" forty- 

 five feet in length, swimming in the Irawaddy, with the head 

 and nearly half of the body out of the water. He is confident 

 that it was travelling at the rate of at least th irty m Qes an hour, 

 and this against a very strong tide! What could this have 

 been? Surely no Crocodilian ; for the great Gavial, the largest 

 of known Saurians, is little more than one-third of this length. 

 MM. Dumeril and Bibron give the dimensions of the largest on 

 record as 5 met. 40 centim., or about 17J^ feet. 



t Zoologist, p. 2356. 



339 



