WOULD-BE SEA-SERPENTS. 715 
the vertebral column and some adherent flesh, were washed away, 
whilst the basking shark of Mr. Home had no neck, because it 
was entire. — Curious, indeed, is the naive passage in which 
ARTEDI is quoted! 
In the comparison of Mr. Homer's basking shark and his own 
stranded animal, Mr. Barciay also wholly overlooks, when he 
states the dimensions, that they were those of the entirely putrified 
remains of an animal, and not of an undamaged being. 
Dr. Barcniay seems to entirely reject Mr. Homn’s idea that the 
“mane had never extended over the whole back, but what was 
seen were only fibres of the putrified backfins, in the two places 
of the foremost and the hindmost backfin, and that the rest of 
the “mane” only existed in the imagination of the witnesses. 
In comparing the dimensions of the pectoral fins and the paws, 
Mr. Barciay again forgets that he has only before him a totally 
mutilated specimen. 
An extract from the “Remarks” of Dr. Barciay was given by 
Dr. Horrmann in Oxen’s Jsis, IL, 1818, p. 2096, where amongst 
others he says: | 
“The paper is full of obscurities, which originate as well in the 
differences of the reports of uneducated eye-witnesses, as in the 
slubbering and inaccurate mode of describing of the writer himself;” 
but Mr. Horrmann himself is not free from inaccuracies! In 
none of Dr. Barcray’s papers mention is made of a “membrana- 
ceous comb extended over bony rays, which was running from the 
shoulders to the end of the tail, over the back.” He has evidently 
translated this (if we may use this expression) from the figure (see 
our fig. 7). But this figure was made for print by Mr. Symz, after 
a drawing made on one of the islands from the description given 
there, and Mr. Syme has changed the “mane” (long loose hairs 
hanging down) into a true backfin of an eel, which he figured 
exactly as he was accustomed to do. Every one will be convinced 
of the truth of my assertion, if he will give himself the trouble 
to compare the figures of eels and muraenas, made by the same 
Mr. Syme in the same volume, with the engraving of the “animal 
of Stronsa.”’ 
Immediately after this paper Mr. Oxzn, the editor of the Jss, 
wrote another one, in which he begins by saying that the imperfect 
description of the animal does not allow to prove any relationship 
with other animals. Further he comes to the conclusion, that, as 
no animal with a bony skeleton has six feet, it must have been 
