WOULD-BE SEA-SERPENTS. | 83 
“The portion of the anterior fin or wing, which was attached to 
the omoplates, consisted of cartilaginous rays; and when such a 
structure of fin is partially separated by commencing decomposition, 
the rays might easily, to the eyes of the uninitiated in natural 
science, seen like toes or fingers.” 
“Even the great Cuvier admits this resemblance when describing 
the fins of fishes:” — 
“Des rayons plus ou moins nombreux soutenant de nageoires 
membraneuses representent grossiérement les doigts, des mains, et 
des pieds.”’ 
“As much of the value of the descriptions of the Orkney animal 
rests on the character and credibility of the individuals who saw 
it most entire, I may be permitted to state that I personally knew 
the three principal witnesses, Thomas Fotheringhame, George 
Sherar, and William Folsetter, to be men of excellent character, 
and of remarkable intelligence. They were not ignorant fishermen , 
as the witnesses were represented to be; but two of them were of 
the better sort of farmers in that part of Orkney; and the first 
and the last of them were also very ingenious mechanics, much 
accustomed to the use of the footru/e, the instrument employed 
in measuring the animal.” 
“They were men of such honour, intelligence, and probity, that 
I can have no doubt of the correctness of any statement they made 
of their impressions of what they had so carefully observed.” 
“It was, therefore, not without surprise, that some mouths 
after these accounts were sent to London, I read a paper by Mr. 
Home (afterwards Sir Everard), in which he recklessly sets aside 
the evidence of the persons who saw and measured the animal in 
its most entire condition, as to its dimensions of length and thick- 
ness; and maintains that it was nothing but a Basking shark 
(Selache maximum!), which he supposes the love of the marvellous 
had magnified so enormously in the eyes of those whom he is 
pleased to call “2gnorant fishermen’. Unfortunately for Home’s 
hypothesis, the Basking shark was probably far more familiar to 
those men than to himself; for it is often captured among the 
Orkney Islands; and its length and proportional thickness are so 
totally different from the animal in question, that the two could 
scarcely be confounded, by the most “ignorant fishermen” who had 
ever seen them.” | 
“These witnesses assert that the Stronsey animal (though a por- 
tion towards the tail was broken off when they took its dimensions) 
