156 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



sunk at various points close beside them, at considerable depths, 

 displayed broken pottery, rude stone and other implements, manu- 

 factured by human beings very little advanced in civilization. 

 Specimens, quite numerous, were discovered between seventy and 

 eighty feet below the base of an adjacent pillar. But previous to 

 the Roman occupation probably the river brought down silt in 

 greater quantity than since. That may be so, although not at all 

 likely ; I think we may strike a fair average from the accumulated 

 deposit of the 2000 years. When Boucher de Perthes, about half a 

 century ago,, produced flint implements, arrow points, which he 

 discovered at Abbeville, many were so blinded by prejudice as to 

 assert that they were merely natural chips, which accidently assumed 

 the appearance presented, and deceptive indications of antiquity. 



I have, for many years, collected all the evidence obtainable 

 respecting the great sea-serpent, or more or less allied sea-monster, 

 because I was not satisfied that Owen and others were fully justified 

 ih rejecting its existence for the reasons adduced. There was, I 

 admit, considerable force in the statement that the misty atmosphere 

 of northern latitudes, coupled with excited fancy, possibly led the 

 (Greenland missionary, Egede, to suppose a ship's mast, in the rough 

 statCj or a similar object, was the thing he described as a frightful 

 reptile, seen by him in 1734. The assertions of other divines, 

 Graemius and Maclean, were considered as unworthy of credit for a 

 like reason. Such an explanation, however, was not deemed by 

 many quite so satisfactory in the case of The JDcEdalus, whose 

 Captain McQuahse reported he had seen an immense sea snake on 

 the homeward voyage from India, on the 6th August, 1848. All 

 the officers alleged there could have been no mistake in this 

 instance. 



When the famous scientist. Professor Owen, stated that " not 

 a single bone of the great sea snake was to be found in any museum, 

 neither can it be shewn that its body was ever washed ashore," he 

 may not have seen the description of the sea monster found by a 

 fisherman lying dead on the strand of one of the Hebrides only a few 

 years previously. I do not know if any record of its dimensions is 

 still in existence, but I am perfectly satisfied that no conger eel, for 

 instance, was ever known to attain one-half its length ; the largest 

 came from the Mediterranean, and never exceeded nine or ten feet, 

 if we can credit the fishermen there. 



