Sea-Serpent. 1845 



supposed to have its original in the narwhal ; and the griffin is recognised as a well-known 

 friend in an antiquated garb, being no other than the tapir, somewhat disfigured by tra- 

 vellers, and further indebted to the artist for a pair of wings and an architectural style of 

 tail. Even the ghost-seer is seldom suspected of intentional fraud, however justly we 

 may believe him to be the dupe of an imagination acted on by some positive phenome- 

 non. The collateral truths which testify on the affirmative side have been dwelt upon to 

 some extent, and shall again be adverted to presently. On the other hand, surely 

 there must be something peculiar in the economy of a vast air-breathing race, fre- 

 quenting well-known tracts, and yet never visible but by the merest accident ; nor is 

 it any sufficient answer to refer to the construction of the breathing apparatus, distinc- 

 tive of the marine ophidians, enabling them to live long under water, and respire air 

 with an almost imperceptible exposure above the surface, because the like provision 

 does not prevent the Pacific denizens from being abundantly subject to observation. 

 The want of conformity in some of the reported particulars of form and dimensions is 

 of insignificant moment, and may easily be converted into a proof of innocence 

 of design. Above all, the objections, be it understood, are not of the kind which the 

 public at large appear to imagine them. There is nothing ridiculous or abnormal in 

 the idea of a sea-serpent. So far from this, the philosopher should rather be required 

 to give a reason why at least the warmer situations of the Atlantic are unprovided with 

 occupants corresponding to those which dwell in the opposite region of the globe. 



If the diversity of detail be accounted too serious an objection to be so lightly dis- 

 missed, is there no other organization within our cognizance which more satis- 

 factorily embodies the several conditions rather loosely intimated than prescribed 

 throughout the problem ? The portraits given in authors of the restored Plesiosaurus, 

 albeit conceived to represent beings that " filled up the measure of their years long- 

 before Eden was planted, and the dominion of man made of the red earth, acknow- 

 ledged '' (Hawkins), offer several particulars answering to those ascribed in most of 

 the notices on record to the so-named sea-serpent, — the long, over-arched neck, the 

 huge trunk, the protracted tail, and sometimes (see the deposition of Archdeacon 

 Deinboll, 'Zool. ' 1606) an appearance of fins or paddles. This coincidence is the 

 more remarkable, because no one can suppose it to have been preconcerted. Hence 

 the ingenious suggestion of the Editor of the ' Zoologist,' that the animals may be- 

 long to one of the E naliosaurian types, seems to supply the only deficient link in the 

 chain of demonstration, before we arrive at the final proof, a spectacle open to all ob- 

 servers. The neck of the Plesiosaurus (presuming this to be the genus indicated) "is 

 composed of upwards of thirty bones, a number far exceeding that of the cervical ver- 

 tebrae in any other known animal. This reptile combines in its structure the head of 

 a lizard, with teeth like those of a crocodile, a neck resembling the body of a serpent, 

 a trunk and tail of the proportions of those of a quadruped, with paddles like those of 

 turtles," (Mantell's ' Wonders of Geology '). If this seemingly whimsical coaptation of 

 incongruous members, which the dictum of science has consigned to the doom of pre- 

 Adamite extinction, can be suspected without unpardonable heresy to be yet among 

 the living,* what is more allowable than to surmise that persons even of cultivated in- 



* To show the difficulty of fixing a date for the existence of wild animals, historians 

 announced the destruction of the wolf in this island ages before the good work was 



v 2o 



