NA TURE 



[June 28, 1900 



js developed to its fullest power. It will be almost the 

 biggest generating station in the world when completed. 

 Eight engines will work up to 52,000 horse-power, and the 

 -electricity generated will be sufficient to work the whole 

 ■of the London tramway system. At the present time the 

 Astronomer Royal said that no serious effect has as yet 

 arisen in the working of the principal meridian instrument. 

 The Astronomer Royal, however, says that the instrument 

 which has been affected is the portable transit instrument 

 used for determining longitude. From the large generating 

 station at Deptford no damage has resulted, and there is 

 no indication of any disturbance. What the authorities 

 have to do is to take very careful observation as to what 

 is exactly going on at Greenwich. At present the station 

 IS never worked up to more than 3000 horse-power. A 

 trial has been made of two engines, but the experiments 

 are neither complete nor satisfactory. It is proposed to 

 ask Prof. Ewing to represent the .Admiralty in the observ- 

 ations to be taken, which must extend over a considerable 

 time. The disturbances vary very much, and there is a 

 great deal to be said as to the possibility of meeting the 

 ■difficulties by reducing the high chimneys, though the 

 Astronomer Royal does not think that the vapour of the 

 chimneys seriously interferes with the observations. It is 

 proposed also to ask the County Council to appoint a re- 

 presentative of its own for observation in order to have 

 an independent report as to the exact amount of disturb- 

 ance that might arise. The London County Council will 

 not go on vifith the two chimneys, which are now only 

 partly erected. Before doing anything it is necessary to 

 discover whether by any re-arrangement of the machinery 

 the threatened damage can be averted. Every effort will 

 be made to make the inquiry a thorough one, and one 

 which should command everyone's respect. 



The position then, as stated by Viscount Goschen, 

 is that a mistake has been made — a mistake by the 

 Admiralty, by the Astronomer Roval, by the County 

 Council, and' by Parliament. The' matter affects, not 

 only the Royal Observatory, but the whole \vo;-ld ; 

 and the best scientific knowledg'e available should be 

 utilised to avert any danger which imperils the useful 

 ■existence of the observatory or interferes with its 

 work. 



THE SEA-SERPENT. 

 ''PHE narrative of an encounter with the "sea- 

 serpent " on December last off the coast of 

 Para, g-iven by Messrs. Nicoll and Meade-Waldo at 

 the meeting- of the Zoological Society held on June ig, 

 has once more awakened interest in the question as to 

 the possibility of the existence of a large unknown 

 marine vertebrate animal. The appearance of the 

 ■so-called " sea-serpent " has been recorded from time 

 to time by quite a number of witnesses. Many of 

 these alleged appearances were evidently based on 

 objects other than vertebrate animals unknown to 

 ■science, but others, as being witnessed by trust- 

 worthy and educated observers, are evidently worthy 

 of more serious consideration. The importance of the 

 recent case — of which more anon — is that it was wit- 

 nessed by two gentlemen who have undergone a long 

 training in the observation of animals, and are there- 

 fore far less likely to be mistaken than persons who 

 have not specially devoted themselves to the study of 

 natural history. 



To attempt to record on the present occasion all the 

 trustworthy cases of the alleged appearance of the 

 sea-serpent (for the sake of convenience we may dis- 

 card the inverted commas) would much exceed our 

 limits of space, and we may therefore refer our 

 readers to the volume by Mr. A. C. Oudemans 

 entitled the "Great Sea Serpent," published in 1892, 

 where all the more important ones up to that date 

 will be found mentioned. It may be profitable to 

 NO. I913, VOL. 74] 



refer, however, to a few of the published opinions 

 of naturalists on the sea-serpent question. In his 

 Challenger book, the late Prof. H. N. Moseley wrote 

 as follows : — 



" The sea-serpent, however, is always open to 

 criticism. This wonderful animal has hardly ever 

 been seen alike by any two observers. It is nearly 

 always easy to a naturalist to understand the stories 

 told. Sometimes it is a pair of whales that is seen ; 

 sometimes a long mass of floating seaweed deceives 

 the distant observer ; sometimes the serpent has large 

 eyes and a crest behind the head ; then it is a ribbon- 

 fish. I myself am one of the few professed 

 naturalists who have seen the serpent. It was on a 

 voyage to Rotterdam from the Thames. ... It 

 was a flock of cormorants, which were flying in line 

 behind the waves, and which were viewed in the 

 intervals between them with a sort of thaumoscopic 

 effect." 



Clearly Mr. Moseley was not " on the side of the 

 angels"; neither was Sir Richard Owen, who 

 attempted to explain the undermentioned appearance 

 seen by the officers of the Daedalus by the seaweed 

 theory ; and that some of the appearances can be 

 explained by Moseley's suggestions, or by a school 

 of porpoises, may be candidly admitted. 



Mr. F. A. Lucas, on the other hand, in his 

 "Animals of the Past," although confessing himself 

 an " agnostic " in regard to this subject, takes up 

 a somewhat less uncompromisingly hostile attitude. 



" Like the ' fossil man,' " he writes, " the sea- 

 serpent flourishes perennially in the newspapers, and 

 despite the fact that he is now mainly regarded as a 

 joke, there have been many attempts to rehabilitate 

 this mythical monster and place him on a foundation 

 of firm fact. The most earnest of these was that of 

 M. Oudemans, who expressed his belief in the exist- 

 ence of some rare and huge seal-like creature whose 

 occasional appearance gave rise to the reports of the 

 sea-serpent. Among other possibilities it has been 

 suggested that some animal believed to be extinct 

 had really lived to the present day. Now there are 

 a few waifs, spared from the wrecks of ancient faunas, 

 stranded on the shores of the present, such as the 

 Australian ceratodus and the gar-pikes of North 

 America. ... If a fish of such ancient lineage as the 

 gar-pike is so common, why may there not be a few 

 plesiosaurs or a mosasaur in the depths of the ocean ? 

 The argument was a good one, the more that we 

 may 'suppose ' almost anything; but it must be said 

 that no trace of any of these creatures has so far 

 been found outside of the strata in which they have 

 long been known to occur, and all the probabilities 

 are opposed to this theory." 



The event recorded bv Messrs. Nicoll and Meade- 

 Waldo took place in the forenoon of December 7, 1905, 

 when they were on board the yacht Valhalla off the 

 coast of Para. At a distance of about 100 yards from 

 the vessel the two observers saw what appeared to 

 be the vertical dorsal fin of some large animal, and 

 a short time afterwards the head and neck of an 

 animal was raised above the water some distance 

 in advance of the fin. The head was compared to 

 that of a turtle, while the neck appeared to be about 

 6 feet in length. The description, so far as we can 

 judge, suggests a creature of not more than about 

 20 feet or 25 feet in length. Although the vessel was 

 subsequently put about, no further signs of the sea- 

 serpent were seen during daylight. It is, however, 

 noteworthy that during the night two of the ship's 

 officers became aware of the presence of some large 

 animal swimming alongside the yacht at a rapid pace ; 

 the two officers, it is stated, had no cognisance of the 

 events of the morning. 



