PN@ ELS.] REPORTS AND PAPERS. 289 
a cartilaginous fish, totally different from any genus known to 
naturalists.” 
Three years afterwards Captain Harrineton’s report (n°. 131) 
was published in the Zimes. Some days afterwards Captain Freps- 
ric Smita published his encounter with a sea-serpent, which after 
being harpooned and hoisted on. board, proved to be a piece of a 
gigantic sea-weed, and the sea-serpents of the Daedalus and of 
Captain Harrineton were in his opinion undoubtedly pieces of the 
same kind of weed. 
Now “An Officer of Her Majesty’s Ship Daedalus felt obliged 
to state again that it was a living animal. As in this letter further 
particulars of the animal are mentioned, I insert it here in ¢ofo, 
(The Times of Febr. 16th., 1858): 
“Sir, — Observing in your paper of yesterday’s date a letter 
from a correspondent to the marine animal commonly called the 
“sea-serpent’, in the concluding paragraph of which he mentions 
that he has no doubt the object seen from Her Majesty’s Ship 
Daedalus in the month of August, 1848, when on the passage 
from the Cape of Good-Hope to St. Helena, was a piece of the 
same sea-weed observed by himself, I beg to state that the object 
seen from her Majesty’s ship was, beyond all question, a living 
animal, moving rapidly through the water against a cross sea, and 
within five pomts of a fresh breeze, with such velocity that the 
water was surging under its chest, as it passed along at a rate 
probably of ten miles per hour. Captain M’Quuaz’s first impulse 
was to tack in pursuit, ourselves being on a wind on the larboard 
tack, when he reflected that we could neither lay up for it nor 
overhaul it in speed. There was nothing to be done, therefore, 
but to observe it as accurately as we could with our glasses, as 
it came up under our lee quarter and passed away to windward , 
at its nearest position bemg not more than two hundred yards 
from us; the eye, the mouth, the nostril, the colour and form, 
all bemg most distinctly visible to us. We all felt greatly astonished 
at what we saw, though there were sailors among us of thirty and 
forty years’ standing, who had traversed most seas and seen many 
marvels in their day. The captain was the first to exclaim: “This 
must be that animal called the sea-serpent”, a conclusion which, 
after sundry guesses, we all at last settled down to. My impression 
was that it was rather of a lizard than a serpentine character, as 
its movement was steady and uniform, as if propelled by fins, not 
by any undulatory power. It was in sight, from our first observing 
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