The Zoologist— May, 1873. 5321 



principally because of the exaggerations and fables with which the 

 whole subject is beset. Nevertheless they consider themselves 

 bound to leave a record of what they saw, in order that naturalists 

 may receive it as a piece of evidence, or not, according to what 

 they think it is worth. The animal will very probably turn up on 

 those coasts again, and it will be always in that " dead season," so 

 convenient to editors of newspapers, for it is never seen but in the 

 still warm days of summer or early autumn. There is a considerable 

 probability that it has visited the same coasts before. In the 

 summer of 1871 some large creature was seen for some time rushing 

 about in Lochduich, but it did not show itself sufficiently for any 

 one to ascertain what it was. Also some years back a well-known 

 gentleman of the west coast, now living, was crossing the Sound of 

 Mull, from Mull to the mainland, " on a very calm afternoon, when," 

 as he writes, " our attention was attracted to a monster which had 

 come to the surface not more than fifty yards from our boat. It 

 rose without causing the slightest disturbance of the sea, or making 

 the slightest noise, and floated for some time on the surface, but 

 without exhibiting its head or tail, showing only the ridge of the 

 back, which was not that of a whale, or any other sea animal that 

 I had ever seen. The back appeared sharp and ridge-like, and in 

 colour very dark, indeed black, or almost so. It rested quietly for 

 a few minutes, and then dropped quietly down into the deep, without 

 causing the slightest agitation. I should say that above forty feet 

 of it, certainly not less, appeared on the surface." It should be 

 noticed that the inhabitants of that western coast are quite familiar 

 with the appearance of whales, seals and porpoises, and when they 

 see them they recognize them at once. Whether the creature which 

 pursued Mr. Maclean's boat off the island of Coll in 1808, and of 

 which there is an account in the ' Transactions of the Wernerian 

 Society' (vol. i. p. 442), was one of these Norwegian animals, it is 

 not easy to say. Survivors who knew Mr. Maclean say that he 

 could quite be relied upon for truth. 



The public are not likely to believe in the creature till it is caught, 

 and that does not seem likely to happen just yet, for a variety 

 of reasons, — one reason being that it has, from all the accounts 

 given of it, the power of moving very rapidly. On the 20th, while 

 we were becalmed in the mouth of Lochourn, a steam launch slowly 

 passed us, and, as we watched it, we reckoned its rate at five or six 

 miles an hour. When the animal rushed past us on the next day 



