112 AMERICAN DESCRIPTIONS. [CHAP. VIII. 



It happened that a common New England species of land snake 

 ( Coluber constrictor}, full grown, and about three feet long, which 

 must have been swept out to sea, was cast ashore, and brought 

 to the committee. It had a series of humps on its back, caused 

 by the individual happening to have a diseased spine a fact 

 which can no longer be disputed, for I have seen the identical 

 specimen, which is still preserved in spirits in the Museum of 

 New Haven. As many of the deponents declared this snake to 

 be an exact miniature of the great monster, the Committee con 

 cluded that it might be its young, and, giving a figure of it, 

 conferred upon it the high-sounding appellation of Scoliophys 

 AtloMicus, the generic name being derived from the Greek 

 OKokiog, scolios, flexible, and o&amp;lt;2l&amp;gt;f, ophis, snake. 



In addition to these published statements, Colonel Perkins, of 

 Boston, had the kindness to lay before me his notes, made in 

 July, 1817, when he saw the animal. He counted fourteen pro 

 jections, six feet apart, on the back, which he imagined to be 

 vertical flexures of the body when in motion ; but he also saw 

 the body bent horizontally into the figure of the letter S. It 

 was of a chocolate brown color, the head flat, and about a foot 

 across. A friend of his took a pencil sketch of it, which was 

 found to resemble Pontoppidan s figure.* Respecting the length, 

 Mr. Mansfield, a friend of the Colonel, was driving a one-horse 

 vehicle on a road skirting Gloucester Bay, along the edge of a 

 cliff, fifty or sixty feet in perpendicular height, when he saw the 

 sea-serpent at the base of the cliff on the white beach, where 

 there was not more than six or seven feet water, and, giving the 

 reins to his wife, looked down upon the creature, and made up 

 his mind that it was ninety feet long. He then took his wife to 

 the spot, and asked her to guess its length, and she said it was 

 as long as the wharf behind their house, and this measured about 

 100 feet. While they were looking down on it, the creature 

 appeared to be alarmed, and started off. I asked another Bos- 

 tonian, Mr. Cabot, who saw the monster in 1818, whether it 

 might not have been a shoal of porpoises followirg each other in 

 a line, at the distance of one or two yards, and tumbling over so 

 * See &quot;Silliman s Journal,&quot; vol. ii. p. 156. 



