[1819.] REPORTS AND PAPERS. 201 
which a closer examination might have decided: in that case the 
name of Wegophias monstrosus might have been appropriated to it.” 
We observe that Mr. Rarrnesauz gives here some characters to 
the Massachusetts’s Sea-Serpent, with which we have met nowhere 
else, apparently only for the purpose of rendering his supposition 
more plausible: 1. “The scales’. It is true that some of the eye- 
witnesses have declared the skin to be rough and scaly, but against 
one who says so, there are ¢wenty who deny it, describing the skin 
to be smooth and having no scales. 2. “The scales are in trans- 
verse rows.” This assertion is made nowhere else. 3. “Its head 
brown mixed with white.’ A new statement. The head is only 
described as white on its throat and lower jaws. 4. “The head of the 
shape of a dog’s.” I did not find this expression any where else; on the 
contrary all agree in its resembling a serpent’s or a snake’s head. 
5. “The teeth like a shark’s, the tail compressed, obtuse, shaped 
like an oar.” Nobody saw either teeth or tail! Indeed a splendid 
description after the reports given of the animal’s external features! 
60. — 1819, June 6. — (Sitmman’s American Journal of 
Science and the Arts, Vol. I], Boston 1820.) 
“J, Hawkins Wheeler, of Fairfield, in the County of Fairfield , 
and state of Connecticut, mariner, Commander of the sloop Con- 
cord, of said Fairfield, in her late passage from New York to 
Salem, in the County of Essex and Commonwealth of Massa- 
chusetts, on oath declare, that during the said passage from New 
York to Salem, to wit, on Monday, the 6th. day of June instant, 
at about five o’clock in the morning, the sloop being as near as 
I could judge, 15 miles N.W. of Race Point, and within sight 
of Cape Ann, I was at the helm of the sloop, and saw directly 
a-head, (the course of the vessel being N.W.) something that re- 
sembled a snake, about 100 yards distance from the sloop, moving 
in a 8. W. direction. The animal moved in that direction, till he 
had passed athwart the course of the sloop, and appeared directly 
over the weather bow, when he altered his course to S. E. At this 
time he had been visible about five minutes, when he sunk, and 
in about six or eight minutes after, appeared again directly over 
the weather quarter, about the same distance from the sloop — 
he continued in that course about five or six minutes, when he 
sunk again, and I saw him no more. His motion was at the rate 
