Reptiles. 2313 



actions constitute the very character which would distinguish a serpent or serpentiform 

 swimmer from any other marine species. The foregone conclusion, therefore, of the 

 beast's being a sea-serpent, notwithstanding its capacious vaulted cranium and stiff 

 inflexible trunk, must be kept in mind in estimating the value of the approximation 

 made to the total length of the animal, as ' at the veiy least 60 feet.' This is the only 

 part of the description, however, which seems to me to be so uncertain as to be inad- 

 missible in an attempt to arrive at a right conclusion as to the nature of the animal. 

 The more certain characters of the animal are these : — Head, with a convex, mode- 

 rately capacious cranium, short obtuse muzzle, gape of the mouth not extending fur- 

 ther than to beneath the eye, which is rather small, round, rilling closely the palpebral 

 aperture ; colour, dark brown above, yellowish white beneath ; surface smooth, without 

 scales, scutes, or other conspicuous modifications of hard and naked cuticle. And the 

 captain says, * Had it been a man of my acquaintance I should have easily recognised 

 his features with my naked eye.' Nostrils not mentioned, but indicated in the draw- 

 ing by a crescentic mark at the end of the nose or muzzle. All these are the charac- 

 ters of the head of a warm-blooded mammal ; none of them those of a cold-blooded 

 reptile or fish. Body long, dark brown, not undulating, without dorsal or other appa- 

 rent fins ; ' but something like the mane of a horse, or rather a bunch of sea-weed 

 washed about its back.' The character of the integuments would be a most important 

 one for the zoologist in the determination of the class to which the above defined 

 creature belonged. If any opinion can be deduced as to the integuments from the 

 above indication, it is that the species had hair, which, if it was too short and close to 

 be distinguished on the head, was visible where it usually is the longest, on the middle 

 line of the shoulders or advanced part of the back, where it was not stiff and upright 

 like the rays of a fin, but ' washed about.' Guided by the above interpretation of the 

 ' mane of a horse, or a bunch of sea-weed,' the animal was not a cetaceous mammal, 

 but rather a great seal. But what seal of large size, or indeed of any size, would be 

 encountered in latitude 24° 44' south, and longitude 9° 22' east — viz. about 300 miles 

 from the western shore of the southern end of Africa ? The most likely species to be 

 there met with are the largest of the seal tribe, e. g. Anson's sea-lion, or that known to 

 the southern whalers by the name of the ' sea-elephant,' the Phoca proboscidia, which 

 attains the length of from 20 to 30 feet. These great seals abound in certain of the 

 islands of the southern and antarctic seas, from which an individual is occasionally 

 floated off upon an iceberg. The sea-lion exhibited in London last spring, which was 

 a young individual of the Phoca proboscidia, was actually captured in that predica- 

 ment, having been carried by the currents that set northward towards the Cape, where 

 its temporary resting-place was rapidly melting away. When a large individual of 

 the Phoca proboscidia or Phoca leonina is thus borne off to a distance from its native 

 shore, it is compelled to return for rest to its floating abode after it has made its daily 

 excursion in quest of the fishes or squids that constitute its food. It is thus brought 

 by the iceberg into the latitudes of the Cape, and perhaps further north, before the 

 berg has melted away. Then the poor seal is compelled to swim as long as strength 

 endures ; and in such a predicament I imagine the creature was that Mr. Sartoris saw 

 rapidly approaching the Daedalus from before the beam, scanning, probably, its capa- 

 bilities as a resting-place, as it paddled its long stiff body past the ship. In so doing, 

 it would raise a head of the form and colour described and delineated by Captain 

 M'Quhae, supported on a neck also of the diameter given ; the thick neck passing into 



