106 THE SEA SERPENT QUESTION REVIVED. 



NATURAL HISTORY. 



THE SEA SERPENT QUESTION REVIVED. 



The recent accounts by the officers and crew of the steamship "jSTestor" 

 of an encounter with a sea serpent in the straits of Malacca, have reyived 

 the old discussions among scientific men regarding the possible existence 

 of such an animal. Discarding the theory that the idea of the sea serpent 

 originated in mythological ages and has been handed down from the Eddas 

 and Sagas of the Norsemen, wherein the Midgard serpent, symbolizing 

 really the sea itself, tumultuously encircling the whole earth in its coils, 

 figures conspicuously, and that this sublime fancy has gradually passed 

 from the profound northern mythology to the doubtful position of a mod- 

 ern superstition among credulous seamen, we Vill take up some later theo- 

 ries advanced in opposition to what appear to be the actual facts. 



In the face of the most positive and seemingly indubitable testimony of 

 experienced and careful nautical observers for hundreds of years past, the 

 negative evidence that the researches of distinguished naturalists have 

 failed to discover any physical traces of its existence in the past or present 

 has been adopted by many scientific men as sufiicient to warrant them in 

 declaring the statements of alleged eye witnesses false, and it has therefore 

 become the rule to deride all such stories as chimerical, sensational, or re- 

 sulting from delusion of the witnesses. 



In explaining away the statements made by sailors and others who 

 claim to have observed sea serpents, it is customary to set forth that such 

 objects as large pieces of sea weed floating with a head-like root projecting 

 above the surface of the water, a shoal of porpoises tumbling along one 

 after the other, a large horse mackerel or some other well known marine 

 animal, have been mistaken for a serpent. In any ordinary tribunal the 

 evidence of men accustomed to live upon the ocean and familiar with its 

 appearances and that of all the more common animals, such, as whales and 

 porpoises, as well as that of such objects as sea weed, the low lying ranges 

 of distant hills, etc., would be unhesitatingly received in preference to any 

 such explanations as the above, while the theoretical impossibilities set 

 forth by even such eminent scientists as Professor Owen would receive no 

 consideration whatever. But as we are discussing the subject on scientific 

 grounds, we will give in brief the points made by those who oppose Profes- 

 sor Owen's theories with their own. 



Many fossil types of animals have been transmitted without inter- 

 ruption from remote geological periods to the present time; others have dis- 

 appeared and reappeared at intervals more or less widely separated. As 



