[1847. | REPORTS AND PAPERS. | 271 
been witnessed: let us seek a satisfactory solution rather than 
terminate enquiry by the shafts of ridicule. The grave and learned 
have often avowed a belief that toads can exist some thousands of 
years without food, light or air, and immured in solid stone: 
surely it is not requiring too much to solicit a suspension of judg- 
ment on the question whether a monster may exist in the sea 
which does not adorn our collections.” 
Mr. Newman, viz. believed that the sea-serpent belonged to the 
class of Reptiles. The “communications and quotations” spoken of 
here, have already been inserted above (n°. 25, 90, 91, 92, 94, 
meeot 102, 106 a. 115, 116, 117). 
TUS. — 1848, August 6. — No report of the sea-serpent has 
ever more shaken the incredulity of hundreds and thousands than 
that generally known as the account of the Daedalus, after the 
frigate from which the sea-serpent was seen. 
The Zimes newspaper of October, 9, 1848, published the follow- 
ing paragraph : | 
“Intelligence from Plymouth, dated 7 Oct.” 
“When the Daedalus frigate, Captain M’Quhae, which arrived at 
Plymouth on the 4th. mstant, was on her passage home from the 
East Indies, between the Cape of Good Hope and St. Helena, her 
captain, and most of her officers and crew, at four o'clock one 
afternoon, saw a sea-serpent. The creature was twenty minutes in 
sight of the frigate, and passed under her quarter. Its head ap- 
peared to be about four feet out of the water, and there was 
about sixty feet of its body in a straight line on the surface. It 
is calculated that there must have been under water a length of 
thirty-three or forty feet more, by which it propelled itself at the 
rate of fifteen miles an hour. The diameter of the exposed part of 
the body was about sixteen inches; and when it extended its jaws, 
which were full of large jagged teeth, they seemed sufficiently 
capacious to admit of a tall man standing upright between them”. 
The Admiralty instantly inquired into the truth of the statement, 
and in the Zimes of the 13th. the gallant captain’s official reply 
was published in the following terms: 
“Her Majesty's Ship Daedalus, 
Hamoaze, Oct. 11.” 
“Sir, —-In reply to your letter of this date, requiring informa- 
‘ 
