80 WOULD-BE SEA-SERPENTS. 
College of Surgeons, Edinburgh, in a dried state, and are 6 inches 
in diameter; and four in the University Natural History Museum , 
preserved in spirits, and are still articulated to each other, whereas 
the other three are separate.” 
“5. Has the skull ever been denuded of skin, muscle, &c.? — 
6. Has it ever been examined by a competent comparative ana- 
tomist? if so, what opinion has he pronounced on it? — ‘This is 
answered by the annoying fact that the skull has not been preserved.” 
“On inquiring of Professor Goodsir with regard to the vertebrae , 
he tells me he has examined them, and that they are undoubtedly 
those of a Shark (Squalus maximus), as are the skull, sternum and 
scapulae, figured in the “Wernerian Memoirs’, p. 418.” 
“We would naturally suppose that the affidavit of those who 
saw this extraordinary animal would be of some avail; but on 
closer inspection even these will be found to have little weight in 
the argument. In the first place it is imfortunate that no well- 
educated person saw it: they were all ignorant, illiterate men, 
who most likely knew nothing further of a shark than that it was 
an animal with a huge mouth, capable of discussing so many 
seamen at a bite, and whose teeth are peculiarly adapted for am- 
putating limbs. In the next place we find these witnesses agreeing 
in one most absurd particular, viz., in the animal having six legs: 
on this pomt it is needless to expatiate; every one knowing any- 
thing of comparative anatomy must see at once the impossibility 
of such. a structure: moreover, even granting its possibility, it 1s 
at once cancelled by Mr. Urquhart’s figure of the sternum and 
scapulae with an ordinary fin thereto attached (Wern. Mem. Vol. 
I. p. 418); the third pair of appendages Dr. Fleming in his 
“British Animals’, supposes were claspers. In the last place we 
may notice one striking contradiction in the evidences: Thomas 
Fothermghame seems to have been astonished at such a large 
animal having such a narrow throat, — so narrow indeed that it 
would not admit his hand; while George Sherar would have had 
no difficulty in putting his foot down it: and as there is nothing 
to prove that Thomas Fothermghame’s hand was larger than George 
Sherar’s foot, we are led to the conclusion that one or other must 
have made a mistake in his calculation.” 
“We might further suggest the improbability of any animal 
sixty feet long having a head only seven inches in diameter, and | 
we might even suspect the carpenter's footrule of showing a decided 
taste for the marvellous; but we must now conclude with this single 
