[1823.| REPORTS AND PAPERS. 229 
Leviathan in the Book of Job with it, to which idea evidently 
Mirton’s Paradise Lost led him. I am far from admitting any 
relation between the story in Holy Writ and the sea-serpents. He 
further quotes Knup Lerems (p. 138), Otaus Maenus (n°. 1, p. 
105, 109), Hans Herpr (n°. 5), Eric Pontopripan, and speaks of 
the letters written to and preserved in the library of Sir Josepu 
Banks, then president of the Royal Society, by General Hawkins 
and General Humpnreys. 
I am also obliged to repeat here 1” ewtenso his plea for the sea- 
serpent (p. 415—419): 
“In the belief of the possibility of events, men are too generally 
guided by the limited knowledge of things they may possess; and 
there are doubtless many among the more uninformed classes, who, 
if told of the existence of an animal attaining the height of eighteen 
feet, such as the giraffe or camelopard, or that the ocean produced 
one like the whale, more than 100 feet in length, would not only 
stare with astonishment, but would as much doubt the truth of 
these assertions, as if imformed of the sea-serpent. This is but 
natural; their knowledge of the world and its productions, deprived 
as they are of other means of attaining it, must be confined to 
the narrow sphere they live in; and the ideas they possess of life 
must necessarily be contracted.” 
“The naturalist, however, whose views of creation are bounded 
by no country, and whose field of mquiry is the globe itself, sees 
with admiration though without surprise the rich kingdom of na- 
ture gradually unfolding itself to the researches of science, and 
finds his imperfect catalogue almost daily swelled by proofs of the 
existence of some new and extraordinary animal, which before was 
unknown to the world, or considered as living in the imagination 
alone. By the exertions of the present age, he has become ac- 
quainted with many creatures, in their forms and habits the most 
singular and strange; and thus he is taught never to deny the 
existence of any thing rashly; assured, as he is, by whatever he 
beholds, of the unlimited power of the great Creator ; and conscious, 
that all which the utmost zeal of man can attain is a knowledge 
of but a very small portion of his works. When he considers the 
various discoveries of modern times, and the astonishing effects 
produced by the ingenuity of man in the united application of 
chemistry and mechanism, it gives him but a more exalted idea 
of that great superior force, which not only sets in motion this 
master machine, and indues it with powers of sense and reflection, 
