282 THE VARIOUS ACCOUNTS, [N° Lise 
Selache, and are not distinguishable from those of the species 
called “basking-shark”, of which individuals from thirty to thirty- 
five feet in length have been from time to time captured or 
stranded on our coasts.” 
“J have no unmeet confidence in the exactitude of my interpre- 
tation of the phenomena witnessed by the captain and others of 
the Daedalus. | am too sensible of the adequacy of the characters 
which the opportunity of a rapidly passing animal, “in a long 
ocean swell’, enabled them to note, for the determination of its 
species or genus. Giving due credence to the most probably accu- 
rate elements of their description, they do little more than guide — 
the zoologist to the class, which, in the present instance, is not — 
that of the serpent or the saurian.” 
“But I am usually asked, after each endeavour to explain Cap- 
tain M’Quhae’s sea-serpent, “Why should there not be a great 
sea-serpent ? — often, too, in a tone which seems to imply, “Do 
you think, then, there are not more marvels in the deep, than 
are dreamt of in your philosophy?” And, freely conceding that 
point, I have felt bound to give a reason for scepticism as well as 
faith. If a gigantic sea-serpent actually exists, the species must, of 
course, have been perpetuated through successive generations, from 
its first creation and introduction into the seas of this planet. 
Conceive, then, the number of individuals that must have lived, 
and died, and have left their remains to attest the actuality of 
the species durmg the enormous lapse of time, from its begin- 
ning, to the 6th. of August last! Now, a serpent, being an air 
breathing animal, with long vesicular and receptacular lungs, dives 
with an effort and commonly floats when dead; and so would the 
sea-serpent , until decomposition or accident had opened the tough 
integument, and let out the imprisoned gases. Then it would 
sink, and, if in deep water, be seen no more until the sea rend- 
ered up its dead, after the lapse of the aeons requisite for the 
yielding of its place to dry land, — a change which has actually 
revealed to the present generation the old saurian monsters that 
were entombed at the bottom of the ocean, of the secondary geo- 
logical periods of our earth’s history. During life the exigencies of 
the respiration of the great sea-serpent would always compel him 
frequently to the surface; and when dead and swollen — 
“Prone on the flood, extended long and large,” 
he would 
» ie floating many a rood; in bulk as huge, 
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