96 CLASS-BOOK OF ZOOLOGY. 



among the different species of Water-snakes, also, there 

 exists one of a gigantic size. 



§398. Pontoppidan, who published, in 1755, a Natural 

 History of Norway, says, that every one in Norway is so 

 firmly convinced of the existence of a gigantic Sea- 

 serpent, several hundred feet in length, that it would 

 excite laughter to hint a belief to the contrary. 



§ 399. Nicolaus Cramius, minister of the gospel at 

 London in Norway, says, that he with several fishermen 

 had seen, Jan. 6th, 1656, at a distance from the shore a 

 Sea-serpent, the length of which was thought to be 300 

 feet. 



§ 400. Paul Egede, Danish Missionary to Greenland, 

 says, that on his second voyage to that country he saw 

 a Sea-monster, raising its head as high as the mast ; it 

 had a long pointed mouth, and its body was covered with 

 scales, and terminated in a tail similar to a serpent. 



§401. Captain Laurant de Ferry, of Bergen in Nor- 

 way, says, that in 1746, returning from a voyage from 

 Trundhin, he and his sailors saw a Sea-serpent of an 

 enormous size, so near his vessel, that he shot at and 

 wounded it. 



§402. The Rev. M. Maclean, of the Hebrides Islands, 

 reported to the Wernerian Society, in 1808, that near 

 the shore of Eigg, at a distance of half a mile, he was 

 pursued in his boat by an enormous Sea-monfter ; but 

 reaching in haste the shore, and having climbed upon a 

 high rock, he saw that it was a serpent at least from 

 seventy to eighty feet long. 



§403. When the news was spread abroad that a Sea- 

 serpent had been seen on the shores of North America, 

 a committee of the Linnean Society of Boston reported, 

 in the month of August, 1817, that they had observed in 

 the Bay of Gloucester, off Cape Ann, in the state of 

 Massachusetts, an enormous Sea-monster of a serpentine 

 form. 



§ 404. The Captain and the ship's company of the ship 

 Havre, which arrived at New Orleans from Havre, in 

 1837, stated, that they saw in lat. 25° 32', about 100 feet 



