HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



saw a sea-serpent resembling the one seen from the 

 Rotomahana off Portland Island. The monster was 

 also seen by the officer in charge of the vessel. It is 

 difficult, indeed, to properly assess the value of this, 

 the latest contribution to sea-serpent lore. 



Now the question very naturally occurs to all : What 

 is the exact value attachable to the minute accounts 

 of the sea-serpents reported by actual eye-witnesses ? 

 To say that they were sheer fabrications, nautical 

 twisters, invented to feed a popular prejudice, would 

 be to throw a doubt on the character of the seaman 

 for veracity that is most unjust and unreasonable. 

 Yet to admit in toto the infallibility of any one 

 of the accounts of the "great sea-serpent" is to 

 accept as a tangible fact the existence of a creature 

 which the major portion of humanity are agreed to 

 regard as purely mythical. Probably those who have 

 helped most largely to feed the at one time wide- 

 spread belief in the ubiquitous monster of the deep 

 but reported accurately what they thought they saw. 

 Granted that a seaman has a traditional notion of 

 what a sea-serpent should be like, he will mould 

 anything which resembles that appearance to his own 

 ideal and hence no doubt the marked agreement 

 between the leviathan of poetry and art and Jack's 

 sea-serpent. At sea the most keen-sighted may 

 easily be deceived, and a floating log, festooned with 

 sea-weeds and enveloped ever and anon with the 

 spray that flashes from the ocean swell, would present 

 an appearance quite analogous to a bemaned sea 

 monster : 



" A great serpent of the deep, 

 Lifting his horrible head above the waves." 



It is but sufficient to premise a belief in the 

 existence of the great sea-serpent and the ever- 

 changing sea-scape of an ocean voyage will present 

 abundance of visible phenomena that may well be 

 read as "sea-serpent." The eye often deceives itself 

 and may often see objectively that which the ima- 

 gination conjures up and which the mind is quite 

 prepared to encounter. No doubt this tendency has 

 much to do with recorded appearances of the sea- 

 serpent, for it is remarkable that in the majority of 

 cases one observance is generally followed by corro- 

 borative appearances. 



Despite all this, however, despite the teachings of 

 science, the sea-serpent belief dies hard. The great 

 leviathan that takes his sport in the great waters is 

 one of the sights that they who go down to the sea in 

 ships will continue to see for some time to come yet. 

 But as far as popular belief in the existence of the 

 great sea beast is concerned its knell is already rung 

 and one of the most poetical and grandest conceptions 

 of ocean's inhabitants is fast passing away before the 

 unsympathising realism of the nineteenth century. 

 But even its bitterest opponents must admit that 

 little is gained by the expurgation of the belief from 

 the popular mind. The loss may be an abstract one 



but it is a great one notwithstanding, for in the words 

 of " Nature's poet : " 



" But yet I know where'er I go, 

 That there hath passed away 

 A glory from the earth." 



TO THE VINEYARDS AND THE PLAY. 



By A. H. Swinton. 



OCTOBER, that has embroidered the vineyards 

 of La Vendee with a cloth of gold, has 

 commenced to paint the greenwood with fiery yellow 

 and vermilion ; and as it were by magic the rows of 

 aspens which have so long pattered fretfully in the 

 sighs of the west wind, are dropping their amber 

 leaves around our hamlet, where the round copper- 

 coloured gourds are reddening to orange. Besides 

 its glory of situation among tumbling crags and 

 knolls, our loveliest of villages does not appear to 

 satisfy the longing, except the fancy should suggest a 

 broth of garden snails with a dandelion salad, and an 

 exhilarating scamper up to the round tower among 

 the vines in the wheelbarrow drawn by the two 

 trusty house-dogs ; for as for the feudal horse-pond 

 mantled with its frog's-bit, and the yoke of beautiful 

 cows that are pawing on the threshold, they have 

 well-nigh broken our hearts and caused us to com- 

 miserate the patriarch in his ark. But the maiden is 

 straying over the meadows and singing at her 

 distaff, the children have just run out shouting, with 

 their pieces of bread and bunches of grapes ; there 

 dwells a gladness in the blue sky,'and we, like them, 

 will betake us to the solitude and sweet converse of 

 the lanes and woodlands, and gaze with them on the 

 magnificent decorations of the expiring year. 



How strange it appears that the delightful summer 

 should so suddenly vanish ! While September lasted 

 it was pleasant to sit in the urban gardens and listen 

 to the tinkle of the bells, as the carriage drawn by its 

 four goats in blue tags with two dogs in leash, swept 

 past on the grand tour, and disappeared among bright 

 lights, deep shadows and startling contrasts of colour, 

 due to a diversity of trees there massed together and 

 interspersed with ponds and rockeries. The Gmko 

 biloba was then covered with its maiden-hair foliage, 

 the Desviodium pendulifolium still drooped in 

 fasciculated bunches of purple, the more lowly 

 MatHola incana was dotted over with its red plant- 

 bugs, the shady magnolia walks from time to time 

 disclosed their fleshy nectarious blossoms, and the 

 widely spreading cedar was only just commencing to 

 put forth its mealy flowers : whereas the fitful rustle 

 of the bamboos, papyrus, and sturdy fan-palms, 

 seemed to bespeak the monotony of an eternal 

 summer. It seems but quite lately too that long, 

 narrow barges came floating down with their hay- 

 ricks into that modern Babel, situated on the rivers ; 



