284, THE VARIOUS ACCOUNTS, [N’. 118. ] 
people of Cape Ann,” United States (see the 8vo pamphlet, 1817, 
Boston, page 38), and figured in the Illustrated London News, 
October 28, 1848, from the original American memoir, by no 
means satisfies the conditions of the problem. Neither does the 
Saccopharyne of Mitchill, nor the Ophiognathus of Harwood — 
the one four and a half feet, the other six feet long: both are 
surpassed by some of the congers of our own coasts, and, like 
other muraenoid fishes and the known small sea snake (Hydrophis), 
swim by undulatory movements of the body.” 
“The fossil vertebrae and skull which were exhibited by Mr. 
Koch, in New York and Boston, as those of the great sea-serpent, 
and which are now in Berlin, belonged to different individuals of 
a species which I had previously proved to be an extinct whale; 
a determination which has subsequently been confirmed by Profes- 
sors Miller and Agassiz. Mr. Dixon of Worthing has discovered 
many fossil vertebrae, in the Eocene tertiary clay at Bracklesham, 
which belong to a larger species of an extinct genus of serpent 
(Palaeopiis), founded on similar vertebrae from the same formation 
in the Isle of Sheppey. The largest of these ancient British snakes 
was twenty feet in length; but there is no evidence that they 
were marine.” 
“The sea saurians of the secondary periods of geology have been 
replaced in the tertiary and actual seas by marine mammals. No 
remains of Cetacea have been found in lias or oolite, and no re- 
mains of Plesiosaur, or Ichthyosaur, or any other secondary reptile, 
have been found in KHocene or later tertiary deposits, or recent, 
on the actual sea-shores; and that the old air-breathing saurians 
floated when they died has been shown in the Geological Trans- 
actions (vol. V., second series, p. 512). The inference that may 
reasonably be drawn from no recent carcase or fragment of such 
having ever been discovered, is strengthened by the corresponding 
absence of any trace of their remains in the tertiary beds.” 
“Now, on weighing the question, whether creatures meriting 
the name of “great sea serpent’ do exist, or whether any of the 
gigantic marine saurians of the secondary deposits may have con- 
tinued to live up to the present time, it seems to me less prob- 
able that no part of the carcase of such reptiles should have ever 
been discovered in a recent or unfossilized state, than that men 
should have been deceived by a cursory view of a partly submerged 
and rapidly moving animal, which might only be strange to them- 
selves. In other words, I regard the negative evidence from the 
