| 1847. | REPORTS AND PAPERS. 269 
In 1847, Mr. Epwarp Newmann, the Editor of the Zoologist 
had the courage to open the columns of his Journal to all kinds 
of reports and discussions about the great sea-serpent. He says 
(p. 1604): 
“It has been the fashion for so many years to deride all records 
of this very celebrated monster, that it is not without hesitation I 
venture to quote the following paragraphs in his defence. A month 
only has elapsed since I had occasion to quote with approbation, 
a very marked passage from the pen of Sir J. W. Hershell (Zool. 
1586): I may apply it with equal propriety to the enquiry of the 
era of the Irish deer, or of the existence of the Great Sea-Serpent. 
Naturalists, or rather those who choose thus to designate them- 
selves, set up an authority above that of fact and observation, the 
gist of their enquiries is whether such things ought to be, and 
whether such things ought not to be; now fact-naturalists take a 
different road to knowledge, they enquire whether such things 
are, and whether such things are not. The Zoologist, if not in 
itself the fountain-head of this fact movement, may at least claim 
to be the only public advocate of that movement; and it is there- 
fore most desirable, that it should call the attention of its readers 
to the followmg remarkable paragraphs. They are quoted from one 
of our daily papers, which gives them as literal translations from 
the Norse papers, in which they originally appeared; the localities 
mentioned are intimately known to all travellers in Norway; and 
the witnesses are generally highly respectable and of unimpeach- 
able veracity. The very discrepancies in the accounts prove the 
entire absence of any preconcerted scheme of deception. The only 
question therefore for the fact-naturalists to decide, is simply, 
whether all of the records now collected, can refer to whales, 
fishes, or any other marine animals with which we are at present 
acquainted.” 
I have no reason to doubt Mr. Newman's veracity, and so Tam 
willing to believe that the five reports which follow this introduc- 
tion “are quoted from one of” the British “daily papers, which gives 
them as literal translations from the Norse papers, in which they 
originally appeared’’. I only ask why Mr. Newman did not mention 
the daily paper? For the assertion of this daily paper that they 
are “literal translations from JVorse papers in which they originally 
appeared’ is at all events a fabrication, as the reports which Mr. 
Newman published here are the evidences which Mr. Hzrtnrica 
RatuHKe took, when on a journey in Norway, near Christiansund, 
