pv?.-118. | REPORTS AND PAPERS. oe 
in that predicament; having been carried by the currents that set 
northwards towards the Cape, where its temporary resting-place 
was rapidly melting away. When a large individual of the Phoca 
proboscidea or Phoca leonina is thus borne off to a distance from 
its native shore, it is compelled to return for rest to its floating 
abode, after it has made its daily excursions in quest of the fishes 
or squids that constitute its food. It is thus brought by the iceberg 
into the latitudes of the Cape, and perhaps farther north, before 
the berg was melted away. Then the poor seal is compelled to 
swim as long as strength endures, and in such a predicament I 
imagine the creature was that Mr. Sartoris saw rapidly approach- 
ing the Daedalus from before the beam, scanning, probably, its 
capabilities as a resting-place, as it paddled its long stiff body 
past the ship. In so doing, it would raise a head of the form and 
colour described and delineated by Captain M’Quhae, supported 
on a neck also of the diameter given; the thick neck passing into 
an inflexible trunk, the longer and coarser hair on the upper part 
of which would give rise to the idea, especially if the species 
were the Phoca leonina, explained by the similes above cited. The 
organs of locomotion would be out of sight. The pectoral fins being 
set on very low down, as in my sketch, the chief impelling force 
would be the action of the deeper immersed terminal fins and 
tail, which would create a long eddy, readily mistakable, by one 
looking at the strange phenomenon with a sea-serpent in his mind’s 
eye, for an indefinite prolongation of the body.” 
“It is very probable, that not one on board the Daedalus ever 
before beheld a gigantic seal freely swimming in the open ocean. 
Entering unexpectedly from that vast and commonly blank desert 
of waters, it would be a strange and exciting spectacle, and might 
well be interpreted as a marvel; but the creative powers of the 
human mind appear to be really very limited, and, on all the 
occasions where the true source of the “great unknown” has been 
detected — whether it has proved to be a file of sportive porpoises, 
or a pair of gigantic sharks— old Pontoppidan’s sea-serpent with 
the mane has uniformly suggested itself as the representative of 
the portent, until the mystery has been unravelled.”’ | 
“The vertebrae of the sea-serpent described and delineated in the 
Wernerian Transactions, vol. I., and sworn to by the fishermen 
who saw it off the Isle of Stronsa (one of the Orkneys), in 1808, 
two of which vertebrae are in the Museum of the College of 
Surgeons, are certainly those of a great shark, of the genus 
