CHAP. VIII.] SEA MONSTER AT STRONSA. 115 



of the Hebrides were terrified by a monster of huge size and 

 unusual appearance, which created a great sensation in Scotland. 

 Three or four months after this apparition, the body of an enor 

 mous sea monster was washed ashore (Sept. 1808) on the outer 

 reefs at Rothesholm Head in Stronsa, one of the Orkneys, where 

 it was first observed while still entire, and its length measured 

 by two persons; after which, when somewhat decayed, it was 

 swept in by another storm, and stranded on the beach, and there 

 examined by others. Mr. Neill, well known as a naturalist, 

 who had been on a visit to Stronsa the same year, but had left 

 before this occurrence, immediately corresponded with friends on 

 the spot, among others with Mr. Laing, the historian, and with 

 a lawyer and physician, who collected evidence for him. Their 

 affidavits, taken in 1808, respecting the monster, were published 

 in the Transactions of the Wernerian Society, of which Mr. 

 Neill was secretary, and were accompanied by a drawing of the 

 skeleton, obviously ideal and very incorrect, with six legs and a 

 long tail curving several times vertically. The man who sketched 

 it reached the spot too late, and when scarcely any part of the 

 animal remained entire, and the outline is admitted to have been 

 taken by him and altered from a figure chalked out upon a table 

 by another man who had seen it, while one witness denied its 

 resemblance to what he had seen. But a carpenter, whose 

 veracity, I am informed by Mr. Neill (in a letter dated 1848), 

 may be trusted, had measured the carcass, when still whole, with 

 his foot-rule, and found it to be fifty-five long, while a person 

 who also measured it when entire, said it was nine fathoms long. 

 The bristles of the mane, each fourteen inches in length, and 

 described as having been luminous in the dark, were no doubt 

 portions of a dorsal fin in a state of decomposition. One said 

 that this mane extended from the shoulders to within two feet 

 and a half of the tail, another that it reached to the tail : a 

 variance which may entitle us to call in question the alleged con 

 tinuity of the mane down the whole back. So strong was the 

 propensity in Scotland to believe that the Stronsa animal was the 

 sea serpent of the Norwegians, that Mr. Neill himself, after draw 

 ing up for the Wernerian Society his description of it from the 



