148 Bigelow on the Sea Serpent. 
The accounts of this phenomenon given under oath by va- 
rious witnesses, also some accounts of previous appearances. 
of the same kind, were collected and published by the Lin- 
nean Society of New-England, that the public might possess 
a fair and correct statement of what had been observed in 
regard to so interesting a subject. In the following year 
Capt. Rich of Boston, went on an expedition fitted out for 
the purpose of taking the Sea Serpent, and after a fruitless 
cruise of some weeks, brought into porta fish of the species 
commonly known to mariners and fishermen by the name 
of Thunny, Albicore or Horse Mackerel, the Scomber 
thynnus of Linneus, and which fish he asserted to be the 
same as that denominated Sea Serpent. This disappoint-- 
ment of public curiosity was attended at the time by a dis- 
belief on the part of many, of the existence of a distinct ma- 
rine annimal of the serpent kind, or of the dimensions and 
shape represented by the witnesses at Gloucester and else- 
where. In some of the scientific journals remarks have 
been published, in which the testimony of these witnesses 
is announced to be an “ absurd story,” attributable to a ‘“ de- 
fective observation connected with an extravagant degree of 
fear.7* 
As the friends of science can have no object in view more 
important than the attainment of truth, it is proper to sub- 
mit to the public consideration some additional evidence in 
vegard to the size and shape of this marme annimal which 
has come to light since the publication of Capt. Rich’s letter 
onthe subject. This evidence is partly the result of obser- 
vations made during the present year, and partly the con- 
tents of a communication made to the American Academy 
of Arts and Sciences fifteen years ago, but which, having 
been mislaid, has not before been published. ‘The reader 
will judge whether itis a “ defective observation” which has 
produced a remarkable coincidence between witnesses in 
different periods and places, unknown to each other ; or 
whether it was an “‘ extravagant degree of fear” which in- 
duced the commander of an American frigate to man his 
* See Thomson’s annals for Jan. 1819, a letter from Mr. Say of Philadel- 
phia. Inthe American Journal of Science vol. I. p. 260, isa note from the 
same author, on the identity of Scoliophis with Coluber constrictor. As this 
gentleman probably received his knowledge on the snbject from page 40th 
of the Linnean Society’s report, it might have been decorous in him to 
have noticed the source from which he got his information. 
