WOULD-BE SEA-SERPENTS. WG 
of the stranded animal, taken from the Memoirs of the Wernerian 
Society. Later on we learn from him that: 
“Dr. Fremine” in his Aistory of British Animals, 1828, (this 
work I have not been able to consult), “in his notice of this animal, 
suggests that these members were probably the remains of pectoral, 
ventral and caudal fins.” 
Mr. RatsuKe in the Archi fiir Naturgeschichte of 1841, after 
having published some accounts, collected by him in Norway about 
the sea-serpent, and after having declared that he himself is a firm 
believer in it, goes on: 
“To which group of known animals, however, this being belongs, 
cannot be asserted with any degree of certainty. The supposition, 
however, is at hand, that it is closely related to that animal, 
which in 1816” (read 1808) “stranded in Stronsa, one of the 
Orkneys, and of which several pieces of the skeleton are said to 
be preserved in the Museum of the University of Edinburgh, and 
in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. I have read a 
note about it in the London Journal ¢he Athenaeum, 1839, p. 902, 
which note is taken from the work: The Naturalst’s Library, Am- 
phibious Carnivora, including the Walrus and Seals, also of the 
Herbivorous Cetacea. By B. Hamilton, M. D. (Edinburgh, Lizars). — 
An ample description of the saved rests of the animal is said to 
have been. written by Dr. Barcnay in the first Volume of the 
Memoirs of the Wernerian Society. 1 had, however, not the 
means of consulting this dissertation. According to the above-men- 
tioned note or extract the creature stranded in Stronsa measured 
56 feet and had (on its thickest part?) a circumference of 12 feet. 
The head was small and one foot long, the neck slender and 15 
feet long. The organs of motion are said to have consisted of three 
pairs of fins: one pair of which is believed to have been properly 
a caudal fin. The foremost pair of fins measured 4 feet; these were 
the longest, and their tops looked like toes, partly, however, 
webbed together. From the shoulders a kind of bristly mane ex- 
tended to near the extremity of the tail. The skin was smooth, 
without scales and of a grey colour. The eye was as large as a 
seal’s. The throat was too narrow to admit the hand.” 
“Judging from these truly incomplete statements, viz. that the 
head was relatively very small, the neck very long and slender, 
and -the extremeties were like fins, one may suppose that the 
animal stranded in Stronsa resembled a Plesiosaurus; and that con- 
sequently it belonged to the Amphibia, viz. to the Saurians.”’ 
