118 THE VARIOUS ACCOUNTS, [N°. 5.] 
must of course have had under its skin a relatively thick layer of bacon, 
and I myself have often seen that the skin of sea-lions and seals 
wrinkled, when the animal bent its body in such a manner as 
the Sea-Serpent of Eczpr did. And we shall afterwards repeatedly 
see that the sea-serpent has no scales but a smooth skin, as seals 
have. And if the animal could have scales, they would be very 
large ones, considering its colossal dimensions, in which case it 
must have been easy to see the scales from a distance, though 
they were wet with the water; but I can hardly believe that one 
can say of an animal, seen at some distance and quite wet and 
shining with the water, whether it has a crust or a soft skin. 
The latter has been the case, for the animal showed wrinkles when 
bending its body. Its lower part was formed like that of a snake, 
by which Herve evidently means to say that it was perfectly round 
and tapered to the end of the tail, and that he did not see any 
appendages (which does not exclude their presence, for the middle 
part of the body remained invisible, hidden by the water). The 
creature plunged dackwards into the water. It evidently has a con- 
siderable flexibility, as is also shown in the figure. Consequently 
it cannot have been a snake, which has no dorso-ventral flexibility, 
nor a gigantic calamary, as Mr. Lex thinks, which has no flexibility 
at all! It had a very flexible, long tail, almost one half of the 
length of its body, which was distinctly seen by Ecrps and figured 
by Mr. Bine. The tail of the animal, being of a considerable 
length, tapered in a point, and had no caudal fins, neither hori- 
zontal nor vertical: ones. The figure shows an eye with a heavy 
eye-brow, a nostril, and teeth; the flappers have external visible 
fingers, as sea-lions have; those of porpoises and dolphins are 
without them. Afterwards we shall more than once have occasion 
to observe that the sea-serpents’s head is drawn by Brine too large, 
and the neck too short. 
Mr. Lex says in his frequently quoted work Sea-Monsters Un- 
masked, “The sea-monster seen by Ecrpr was of an entirely diff- 
erent kind” (viz. from those mentioned by Macnus and PonTopprpan). 
I am of the opinion that if Mr. Ler had written: The sea-monster 
seen by Ecrpr was the same, but seen in an entirely different 
position, condition and direction, he would have been nearer the 
truth; for careful inquiry has shown me that the sea-serpents of 
Maenus and Pontoprrpan are the same as those which still appear 
in the Norwegian seas, and those have all the characters of Kexpr's 
animal. Moreover we saw that the animal, mentioned in our accounts 
