Miscellaneous. 401 



my sketch, the chief impelling force would be the action of the 

 deeper immersed terminal fins and tail, which would create a long 

 eddy, readily mistakeable by one looking at the strange phenomenon 

 with a sea-serpent in his mind's eye, for an indefinite prolongation of 

 the body. 



It is very probable that not one on board the Daedalus ever before 

 beheld a gigantic seal freely swimming in the open ocean. Entering 

 unexpectedly upon that vast and commonly blank desert of waters, 

 it would be a strange and exciting spectacle, and might be well in- 

 terpreted as a marvel : but the creative powers of the human mind 

 appear to be really very limited, and on all the occasions where the 

 true source of the " great unknown" has been detected — whether it 

 has proved to be a file of sportive porpoises, or a pair of gigantic 

 sharks, — old Pontoppidan's sea-serpent with the mane has uniformly 

 suggested itself as the representative of the portent, until the my- 

 stery has been unravelled. 



The vertebra? of the sea-serpent described and delineated in the 

 ' Wernerian Transactions,' vol. i., and sworn to by the fishermen who 

 saw it off the Isle of Stronsa (one of the Orkneys), in 1808, two of 

 which vertebrae are in the Museum of the College of Surgeons, are 

 certainly those of a great shark, of the genus Selache, and are not 

 distinguishable from those of the species called " basking-shark," of 

 which individuals from 30 feet to 35 feet in length have been from 

 time to time captured or stranded on our coasts. 



I have no unmeet confidence in the exactitude of my interpre- 

 tation of the phaenomena witnessed by the captain and others of the 

 Daedalus. I am too sensible of the inadequacy of the characters 

 which the opportunity of a rapidly passing animal, " in a long ocean 

 swell," enabled them to note, for the determination of its species or 

 genus. Giving due credence to the most probably accurate ele- 

 ments of their description, they do little more than guide the zoolo- 

 gist to the class, which, in the present instance, is not that of the 

 serpent or the saurian. 



But I am usually asked, after each endeavour to explain Cap- 

 tain M'Quhae's sea-serpent, " Why there should not be a great 

 sea-serpent?" — often, too, in a tone which seems to imply, "Do 

 you think, then, there are not more marvels in the deep than are 

 dreamt of in your philosophy ? " And freely conceding that point, 

 I have felt bound to give a reason for scepticism as well as faith. 

 If a gigantic sea-serpent actually exists, the species must of course 

 have been perpetuated through successive generations from its first 

 creation and introduction in the seas of this planet. Conceive, then, 

 the number of individuals that must have lived and died and have 

 left their remains to attest the actuality of the species during the 

 enormous lapse of time from its beginning to the 6th of August 

 last ! Now, a serpent, being an air-breathing animal with long 

 vesicular and receptacular lungs, dives with an effort, and commonly 

 floats when dead ; and so would the sea-serpent until decomposition 

 or accident had opened the tough integument and let out the impri- 

 soned gases. Then it would sink, and, if in deep water, be seen no 

 more until the sea rendered up its dead, after the lapse of the aeons 



