30 ATTEMPTS TO DISCREDIT THE SEA-SERPENT. 
whales and other inhabitants of the deep, which he has ever 
witnessed’ (Chronicle). i. 
Though the description of the form might lead to the belief 
that what is reported to have been seen was a real sea-serpent, 
yet I consider the whole account as a story, because it is not the 
habit of the sea-serpent to attack a ship after having been struck 
by a ball, but to plunge down and to disappear. 
Again the sea-serpent was said to have appeared in Lake Ontario. 
In Frortmp’s NVotizen of August 1835, Vol. 45, n°’. 980, p. 186, 
we read: 
“The Colossal Sea-Serpent is again reported in the American 
newspapers. Now it is even told that it has been seen in Lake 
Ontario, 78 feet long, as thick as a large flour-barrel, and of a- 
blue colour spotted with brown. If this is not an illusion, the sea- 
serpent at last ought to have been explained or will be so very soon”. 
It seems that Mr. Frortep really believes, that if this report is 
not the result of an optical illusion, it is trustworthy, and that 
the appearance of the Sea-Serpent in Lake Ontario does not belong 
to the impossibilities! Every one will agree with me, that the 
report can only be the result of an illusion, or that it is a hoax. 
In 1845 Dr. Atsert C. Kocu “exhibited a large skeleton of a 
fossil animal, under the name of Hydrarchos Sillimanni in Broadway , 
New York, purporting to be that of an extinct marine serpent. 
These remains consisted of a head and vertebral column, measuring 
in all 114 feet, of a few ribs attached to the thoracic portion of the 
latter, and of parts of supposed paddles” (see Proc. Boston Soc. 
of Nat. Hist. Nov. 1845, Vol. Il, p. 65). I show here to my 
readers the figure of this skeleton, which I have found in the 
Wochenblatt fiir das Christhiche Volk of 1878. The description of 
this skeleton in full particulars is given by Prof. Wyman in the 
above mentioned American Journal. I will not trouble my readers 
with it, but only mention that Prof. Wyman in the same paper 
proved that “these remains never belonged to one and the same 
individual, and that the anatomical characters of the teeth indicate 
that they are not those of a reptile, but of a warm blooded mammal”. 
