Reptiles. 2321 



From the difficulty of assigning it a place, it has been the subject of no fewer than 

 four or five generic appellations, and is finally referred, by my friend Dr. Melville, to 

 the Delphinorhynchus micropterus of Dumortier, two other specimens of which only 

 exist, the one stranded at Havre, the other at Ostend. Were this animal known only 

 by tradition, is it improbable that naturalists would have refused it their sanction, 

 under an impression that a species of such individual magnitude could not possibly 

 have escaped being captured and subjected to their criticism? And yet the recogni- 

 tion of the great Physeter bidens is purely the result of an accident ! 



If the reptilian nature of this mysterious creature be supposed to have been esta- 

 blished, it becomes an interesting speculation to consider how far the stories of terrific 

 dragons, transmitted to us by the ancients, had their origin in realities with which they 

 were more conversant than ourselves. The sea-serpent, if a real existence, is of no 

 modern creation. Our forefathers must have seen it. The utmost length at present 

 allowed to land-snakes is twenty-five feet (Schlegel). Nevertheless, the very important 

 part sustained by the serpent in the old mythologies, — its imposing magnitude and 

 prowess, as celebrated by historians and poets, — and its consequence in the romantic 

 annals of the middle ages, will instil a suspicion that, perhaps, not the biographers of 

 snakes were mendacious, but their heroes, like those of " the last minstrel," have 

 changed or disappeared in the progress of civilization. It is without the slightest 

 idea of attaching any overstrained importance to the following passages that I venture 

 to quote them, as proving that the idea of serpents frequenting and traversing the sea 

 was at least not repugnant to ancient prejudices. The avenging ministers of Minerva, 

 crossing the JSgean on their mission to destroy Laocoon, might be vindicated by an 

 ardent classic as the model from which the moderns have often plagiarised their 

 descriptions of the sea-serpent. 



" Ecce autem gemini a Tenedo tranquilla per alta 

 (Horresco referens) immensis orbibus angues 

 Incumbunt pelago, pariterque ad litora tendunt : 

 Pectora quorum inter fluctus arrecta, jubceque 

 Sanguineae exuperant undas ; pars caetera pontum 

 Pone legit, sinuatque immensa volumine terga. 

 Fit sonitus spumante salo." — Virgil. 



The poet, too, is sustained by the naturalist, for here we have Pliny (whose facts 

 by the way deserve to have inspired the apophthegm that " truth is stranger than fic- 

 tion " ) telling how the African dracones were wont to club together and brave the 

 perils of the Ked Sea, in quest of the more luxurious diet of Arabia: " Narrator in 

 maritimis eorum quaternos quinosque inter se cratium modo implexos erectis capiti- 

 bus velificantes, ad meliora pabula Arabian vehi fluctibus."* — (Plin. Hist. Nat. 

 viii. 13). 



* A writer in one of the daily papers, after suggesting whether the animals under 

 discussion might not be full-grown specimens of the Saccopharynx flagellum of Dr. 

 Mitchell (described in the 'Annals of the New York Lyceum of Natural History,' for 

 March, 1824), or of the Ophiognathus ampullaceus of Dr. Harwood (Phil. Trans. 

 1827), gives Captain M'Quhae the benefit of a further conjecture, viz., whether some 

 land species, as the boas, among which are individuals " forty feet" in length, may 



