2314 Reptiles. 



an inflexible trunk, the longer and coarser hair on the upper part of which would give 

 rise to the idea, especially if the species were the Phoca leonina, explained by the si- 

 miles above cited. The organs of locomotion would be out of sight. The pectoral 

 fins being set on very low down, as in my sketch, the chief impelling force would be 

 the action of the deeper immersed terminal fins and tail, which would create a long 

 eddy, readily mistakeable by one looking at the strange phenomenon with a sea-serpent 

 in his mind's eye for an indefinite prolongation of the body. 



" It is very probable that not one on board the Daedalus ever before beheld a gi- 

 gantic seal freely swimming in the open ocean. Entering unexpectedly from that 

 vast and commonly blank desert of waters it would be a strange and exciting spectacle, 

 and might well be interpreted as a marvel ; but the creative powers of the human mind 

 appear to be really very limited, and on all the occasions where the true source of the 

 ' great unknown ' has been detected — whether it has proved to be a file of sportive 

 porpoises, or a pair of gigantic sharks — old Pontoppidan's sea-serpent with the mane 

 has uniformly suggested itself as the representative of the portent, until the mystery 

 has been unravelled. 



" The vertebrae of the sea-serpent described and delineated in the ' Werneriau 

 Transactions,' vol. i., and sworn to by the fishermen who saw it off the Isle of Stronsa 

 (one of the Orkneys), in 1808, two of which vertebrae are in the Museum of the College 

 of Surgeons, are certainly those of a great shark, of the genus Selache, and are not 

 distinguishable from those of the species called ' basking-shark,' of which individuals 

 from 30 feet to 35 feet in length have been from time to time captured or stranded on 

 our coasts. 



" I have no unmeet confidence in the exactitude of my interpretation of the phe- 

 nomena witnessed by the captain and others of the Daedalus. I am too sensible of 

 the inadequacy of the characters which the opportunity of a rapidly passing animal, 

 ' in a long ocean swell,' enabled them to note, for the determination of its species or 

 genus. Giving due credence to the most probably accurate elements of their descrip- 

 tion, they do little more than guide the zoologist to the class, which, in the present 

 instance, is not that of the serpent or the saurian. 



" But I am usually asked, after each endeavour to explain Captain M'Quhae's sea- 

 serpent, ' Why there should not be a great sea-serpeut ?' — often, too, in a tone which 

 seems to imply, ' Do you think, then, there are not more marvels in the deep than are 

 dreamt of in your philosophy ? ' And freely conceding that point, I have felt bound 

 to give a reason for scepticism as well as faith. If a gigantic sea-serpent actually ex- 

 ists, the species must of course have been perpetuated through successive generations 

 from its first creation and introduction into the seas of this planet. Conceive, then, 

 the number of individuals that must have lived and died, and have left their remains 

 to attest the actuality of the species during the enormous lapse of time from its begin- 

 ning to the 6th of August last! Now, a serpent, being an air-breathing animal, with 

 long vesicular and receptacular lungs, dives with an effort, and commonly floats when 

 dead ; and so would the sea-serpent, until decomposition or accident had opened the 

 tough integument and let out the imprisoned gases. Then it would sink, and, if in 

 deep water, be seen no more until the sea rendered up its dead, after the lapse of the 

 ceons requisite for the yielding of its place to dry land — a change which has actually 

 revealed to the present generation the old saurian monsters that were entombed at the 

 bottom of the ocean of the secondary geological periods of our earth's history. During 



