SEA-SERPENTS 411 



have been no more than immense eels, a family of 

 fishes which contains many diverse, and in some cases 

 gigantic, kinds. A famous sea-serpent that came 

 ashore on Stronsa, in Orkney, in 1808, measured 

 56 feet long, and was carefully chronicled and de- 

 scribed in the Transactions of the Wernerian Society, 

 was almost certainly a huge oar-fish of the genus 

 Regalecus. Sir Everard Home, it is true, identified 

 the two vertebrae which alone were preserved as those 

 of the great Basking Shark ; but I have examined 

 vertebrae of both fish, and believe that, in a more or 

 less mutilated condition, they might well be mistaken 

 for one another, even by an anatomist. 



But the great sea-serpent is something other than 

 these, and, whatever it may be, the many accounts 

 of its appearance deserve a patient hearing and judicial 

 investigation. More things than one seem to have been 

 included under its name. It is now " that sea-beast 

 Leviathan, which God of all His works Created hugest 

 that swim the ocean stream " ; in Milton's account of 

 which is mixed up the Eastern tale of Sindbad the 

 Sailor, and the great whale on which he and his com- 

 rades landed and built their fire. Again as the Kraken 

 of Pontoppidan (who himself, however, distinguishes 

 between the Kraken and the true sea-serpent) it is 

 clearly recognizable as some sort of gigantic cuttle- 

 fish or octopus ; and of the same kind was also in all 

 probability the " very long and frightful sea-monster " 

 seen by the Rev. Hans Egede off Greenland in 1734. 

 Now, though these latter denizens of the great deeps 

 come but seldom into the hands of competent observers, 

 yet we do know, for certain, that cuttle-fishes of enor- 

 mous size exist in the various oceans. Professor Owen 

 described one which came ashore on the Island of 

 Achill, whose arms were 30 feet long, and whose eyes 



