1 68 Sea^Serpents 



the part of himself and others, this Sea-serpent story 

 goes round the world and is published in many news- 

 papers. It is also used truimphantly by Professor 

 Oudemans, Director of the Royal Zoological Society 

 at The Hague, as a convincing proof of the correctness 

 of his theory of Sea-serpents. 



There lies before me as I write a portly volume of 

 six hundred pages, with many illustrations, compiled 

 with amazing industry and perseverance by this learned 

 gentleman, apparently for the sole, and to him sufficient, 

 purpose of buttressing his theory as to the nature and 

 character of the Sea-serpent, of whose existence, by 

 the way, he has no doubt. Only, the creature he has 

 evolved for his own satisfaction from the mass of 

 material he has so carefully collected is not a serpent 

 at all, but an amazingly developed mammal of the sea 

 tribe, a Pinniped, to which he boldly assigns a length 

 of two hundred and fifty feet. If it were not for the 

 many instances given in this volume of the amazing 

 credulity displayed by scientific men when in the 

 presence of some extraordinarily gifted romancer 

 (vide the British Association and M. Grien's stories 

 of flying wombats, saw-fish in inland lakes, turtle- 

 riding, etc.), I should feel disposed to be quite 

 contemptuous about Dr. Oudemans' ' conclusions.' 

 But apart from his scientific credulity, he displays a 

 really touching anxiety to extract from the mountain 

 of lies, absurdities, and superstitions he has collected 

 with so much labour, a sufficient number of grains of 

 truth for the putting together of his pet sea monster. 

 As to his rejection of other scientific theories of the 

 Sea-serpent, I make no account of that. He only 

 deals with rival theorists after his kind. It seems to 

 be rather a feature with scientific men of a certain 

 class to build a theory first, then mould the evidence 



