WOULD-BE SEA-SERPENTS. 85 
the Basking-shark, in the same situation, 1s about seven inches in 
diameter. Dr. Barclay’s paper is accompanied by an engraving of 
the omoplates, and upper portion of the pectoral fin, which are 
accurately given, from a drawing made from the recent remains, 
by the late Mr. John T. Urquhart, an accomplished draughtsman, 
and able naturalist. I know the representation to be correct, for I 
saw and handled the specimen. The substance of this part was a 
firm, but flexible cartilage, and seemed to have been placed in the 
muscles; just as Cuvier describes the omoplates of sharks to be: 
Leur omoplates sont suspendues dans le chair, en arriere des Bran- 
chies, sans articuler ni au crane ni a l’espive. The Orkney animal 
seems to have had ¢wo circular spiracles on each side of its neck, 
about 1'/, inch in diameter; whereas the Basking shark has jive 
finear spiracles on each side, a foot or more in length.” 
“The cranium, which I also very carefully examined, was far 
too small for that of a Basking shark of even one-fourth the usual 
lenght of that species. It measured in its dried state no more than 
twelve inches in length, and its greatest diameter was only seven 
inches. A Basking shark of thirty-six feet long would have had a 
head of at least five feet m length; and the diameter of the cran- 
ium at the angles of the mouth, would have measured probably 
five feet. These proportions positively show, that the Orkney animal 
could not possibly be confounded by intelligent men, accustomed 
to see the Basking shark, with that fish. There was a hole on the 
top of the cranium, something similar to the blow-hole of the ceta- 
ceans; but its lateral spiracles and cartilaginous bones forbid us to 
refer it to the order of cetacea”’. 
“Every thing proves the Orkney animal to have been a chon- 
dropterygious fish, different from any described by naturalists; but 
it has no pretensions to the denomination of Sea Serpent or Sea 
Snake, although its general form, and probably its mode of pro- 
gression in the Ocean, may give it some resemblance to the order 
of Serpentes. Certainly, it cannot be confounded with any known 
shark; nor does it belong to the family of Squalidae”’. 
I am obliged to point out some discrepancies in Mr. Train's 
paper. First he asserts that in a few days the dead animal was 
cast on shore by a violent gale “where it remained for sometime 
tolerably entire’. This is not true, for the dead animal was already 
in a very putrified and damaged state, when it floated on the sur- 
face of the sea, for the pectoral fin was already putrified and the 
fibres had become loose. 
