114 SEA MONSTER AT STRONSA. [CHAP. VIII. 



representatives of the hydrophis or true water-snake, nor of tor 

 toises, nor of the batrachian or lizard tribes. 



In like manner, in the geological periods, immediately ante 

 cedent to that when the present molluscous fauna came into 

 existence, there was a similar absence of large reptiles, although 

 there were then, as now, in colder latitudes, many huge sharks, 

 seals, narwals, and whales. If, however, the creature observed 

 in North America and Norway, should really prove to be some 

 unknown species of any one of these last-mentioned families of 

 vertebrata, I see no impropriety in its retaining the English 

 name of sea serpent, just as one of the seals is now called a sea 

 elephant, and a small fish of the Mediterranean, a sea horse ; 

 while other marine animals are named sea mice and urchins, 

 although they have only a fanciful resemblance to hedgehogs or 

 mice. 



Some naturalists have argued that, if it were an undescribed 

 species, some of its bones must, ere this, have been washed ashc-re ; 

 but I question whether we are as yet so well acquainted with all 

 the tenants of the great deep as to entitle us to attach much 

 weight to this argument from negative evidence ; and I learn 

 from good zoologists that there are whales so rare as never to 

 have been seen since Sibbald described them in the middle of 

 the seventeenth century. There is also a great cetacean, about 

 thirty feet long, called Delphinorhyncus micropterus, of which 

 only three specimens have ever been met with. One of these 

 was thrown ashore forty years ago on the coast of Scotland, and 

 the other two stranded on the shores of Belgium and France, and 

 identified with the British species by Dr. Melville. 



The doubts, however, which since my return from the United 

 States, I have been led to entertain respecting the distinct and 

 independent existence of the sea serpent, arise from a strong sus 

 picion that it is a known species of sea animal which has % actu 

 ally been cast ashore in the Orkneys, and that some of its bones 

 are now preserved in our museums, showing it to be of the 

 squaline family, and no stranger to some of the zoologists whom 

 it has perplexed, nor to many of the seafaring people whom it 

 has frightened. In the summer of the year 1808, the fishermen 



