108 THE SEA SERPENT QUESTION REVIVED. 



liorse, and its coils, which were yqyj large, rose at intervals of six feet. 



Mr. Maclean, a clergyman, described, in a communication to the Wer- 

 nerian Society of Natural History, a monster which he saw in Juue, 1808, 

 on the coast of Cali. It also moved by vertical undulations and was from 

 seventy to eighty feet long. Some months later there was stranded upon 

 one of the Orkney Islands the body of a monstrous serpent, which Dr. 

 Barclay and other scientific men carefully examined and described. It was 

 fifty-six feet long and ten feet in circumference, had a bristling mane ex- 

 tending nearly the whole length of its body, and was furnished with fins 

 wiiich measured about four feet and resembled the plucked wings of a goose. 



Sea serpents have been seen by numerous witnesses along the coast of 

 Massachusetts, near Gloucester, in 1815 and 1817; off Nahant, in 1819 and 

 1833, and further south, along the Atlantic Coast, in 1835 and 1848. The 

 ■description of the last named, given by Cajjt. McQuhae, of Her Majesty's 

 frigate Dedalus, was very minute, and was corroborated in most particulars 

 by that of Lieut. Drummond, of the same vessel. 



More recently a sea serpent was seen on the coast of Scotland, by Mr. 

 -James M. Jouass, a man of science and one not easily deceived or deluded. 

 It was first seen by two ladies in September, 1873, again the next morning 

 by Dr. Soutar, and the following day by Mr. Jouass himself It is described 

 in the London Field as being forty to fifty feet long, brownish yellow in 

 color, and occasionally raising its head about four feet above the water. 



In Land and Water for September 1, 1872, Frank Buckland gives a cir- 

 cumstantial account of a large serpent, about ninety-six feet long, black in 

 color, with a flat head and probably a dorsal fin, which was seen by a visit- 

 ing party, on two different occasions, in the waters of Loch Hourn, Scot- 

 land, in August, 1873. This monster also progressed by vertical undulations, 

 which Mr. Buckland accounts for by suggesting that this may have been an 

 immense ground-fish, with a motion in the vertical plane like the flat-fish, 

 which occasionally comes to the surface. 



The Panama Star and Herald, of February 16th, 1873, contains an ac- 

 count of a marine animal seen from the steamer Guayaquil, in the Bay of 

 Panama. Its head was like that of a sea-horse, and its length was esti- 

 mated at about twenty -five feet. A sting-ray fish, of large size, accom- 

 panied it at the time it was observed. 



The description of the sea serpent observed by the officers of the steam- 

 ship I'J'estor, referred to at the beginning of this article, is taken from the 

 London Spectator, and is as follows : 



"In the Straits of Malacca the sea-monster so repeatedly seen, and so 

 repeatedly declared to be mythical, appears at last to have been carefully 

 observed by competent witnesses. The creature was seen by the passengers 

 and crew of the ship Nestor, on her voyage to Shanghai, and on her arrival 

 at Shanghai the master of the ship (Mr. John Keller Webster) and the sur- 

 geon (Mr. James Anderson) made a statutory declaration of* what they had 

 ■seen, before a magistrate, as a mode, we suppose, of formally attesting that 



