[Ne. 118. ] REPORTS AND PAPERS. 285 
utter absence of any of the recent remains of great sea serpents, 
krakens, or Lnahosauria, as stronger against their actual existence, 
than the positive statements which have hitherto weighed with the 
public mind in favour of their existence. A larger body of evidence 
from eye-witnesses might be got together in proof of ghosts than 
of the sea-serpent.”’ 
What speaks for itself, this letter appeared in several journals 
and newspapers. So I have found it in the Annals and Magazine 
of Natural History, 2d. Ser. Vol. Il, p. 458 (15? Nov. 1848), in 
Ganicnanr’s Messenger of Nov. 23, 1848, in the Léustrated London 
News of Nov. 25, 1848, and in the Zoologist, of Nov. 27, 1848. 
As it came from such a quarter it is not surprising that many 
persons were willing to acquiesce in the decision. 
Captain M’Quuaz, however, promptly replied to Professor Owen. 
His answer was also addressed to the Editor of the Times (Times, 
Nov. 21, 1848): 
“Sir, — Will you do me the very great favour to give a place 
in your widely-circulating columns to the following reply to the 
animadversions of Professor Owen on the serpent or animal seen 
by me and others from Her Majesty’s ship Daedalus on the 6th. 
of August last, and which were published in the Times of the 
14th. inst. ? 
“T am, Sir, your obedient servant 
“P. M’Quhae. 
“Late Captain of Her Majesty’s ship Daedalus. 
“London, November 18. 
“Professor Owen correctly states that I “evidently saw a large 
creature moving rapidly through the water very different from 
anything | had before witnessed, neither a whale, a grampus, a 
great shark, an alligator, nor any of the larger surface-swimming 
creatures fallen in with in ordinary voyages’. I now assert, neither 
was it a common seal nor a sea elephant; its great length, and 
its totally differmg physiognomy, precluding the possibility of its 
being a Phoca of any species The head was flat, and not a 
“capacious vaulted cranium;” nor had it “a stiff inflexible trunk’? — 
a conclusion to which Professor Owen has jumped, most certainly 
not justified by the simple statement, that “no portion of the 
sixty feet seen by us was used in propelling it through the water, 
either by vertical or horizontal undulation.” 
“It is also assumed that the “calculation of its length was made 
under a strong preconception of the nature of the beast;” another 
