400 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



unworthy of credence or consideration. To have taken only the 

 most authentic accounts of the appearance of strange marine 

 forms supposed to have been Sea Serpents, to have examined 

 them critically from the zoologist's point of view, and to have 

 compared them one with another, to show their consistencies and 

 inconsistencies, would have been an interesting and useful piece 

 of work, but the remarkable conclusions at which Mr. Oudemans 

 has arrived show that he cannot be regarded as a safe guide, and 

 the reader so far from accepting his conclusions, must be left to 

 form his own opinion of the value of the various accounts 

 presented to him. 



Although Mr. Oudemans has never seen a " Sea Serpent " 

 himself, nor examined or dissected any portion of one procured 

 by anybody else, he has no hesitation in evolving an animal from 

 the descriptions which he has collected, and bestowing upon it a 

 scientific name ! In Nov., 1881, in the first number of the 

 1 Album der Natur,' treating of the probability of the existence of 

 a Great Sea Serpent, he examined the characters ascribed to it 

 by various writers, and came to the conclusion that it " must be 

 a mammal with four flappers, a long neck, and a long and pointed 

 tail, and that the position of this marine mammal is between 

 Dolphins and Pinnipeds." Accordingly he proposed to name it 

 Zeuglodon plesiosauroides (p. 445). After ten years' consideration 

 he is apparently unwilling to abandon his position, and after 

 studying the law of priority, while considering the rules for zoolo- 

 gical nomenclature, he has come to the conclusion (p. 546) that the 

 oldest name for the genus is Megophias, of Kafinesque, and that 

 the only name to be given to the Sea Serpent is that of Megophias 

 megophias (Raf.) Oudemans ! 



Although we are unable to accept his conclusions, we fully 

 recognise the amount of labour bestowed upon this compilation, 

 which, it must be allowed, is extremely entertaining. A little 

 more care in the revision of the proof-sheets, especially in 

 regard to the spelling of English proper names, would have been 

 well bestowed. 



