ENT. 118. | REPORTS AND PAPERS. 293 
this, as in his conviction that the sea-serpent of Captain M’Quuax 
was merely an extraordinarily developed sea-snake! A few pages 
further on, viz., the writer of Lessure Time Studies, quoting the 
report of Captain M’Quuak says: 
“The idea that the animal observed in this instance was a huge 
serpent, seems to have been simply slurred over without that due 
attention, which this hypothesis undoubtedly merits.” (!) 
And on the following page: 
“Suppose that a sea-snake of gigantic size is carried out of 
ordinary latitude, and allow for slight variations and inaccuracies 
in the accounts given by Captain M’Quhae, and I think we have 
in these ideas the nearest possible approach to a reasonable solution 
of this interesting problem.” (!!) 
Though they don’t touch our subject directly, the following 
words of Mssrs. H. E. Srricktanp and A. G. Metnvinie, treating 
of the Dodo, are well worth our notice; they say (Aunals and 
Magazne of Natural History 2d. Series, Vol. II, p. 444, Nov. 
15?, 1848): 
“In proof of the existence of the Dodo we have — unlike the 
assumed evidence of the existence of some other anomalous monsters 
of which we have lately heard much — every canon of cautious 
truthseeking fully satisfied. With no traditional superstition or belief 
to give an origin to such a story (a point of no little importance 
in such an investigation), we have here fifteen or sixteen seperate 
and independant authorities all alluding incidentally to the Dodo, 
each different im language and description, yet each of which has 
pots of resemblance that cannot be mistaken as referring to 
similar objects. We have moreover drawings of the creature itself, 
made by different hands, and at different times, and with different 
objects; some of them rude and coarse to grotesqueness, other 
finished works of art. Yet throughout all these there run characters 
which it is impossible to mistake, and which satisfy us that the 
draughtsmen drew, not from imagination, but from something real, 
and from individuals of one and the same species.” 
I am obliged to remark here that the proof of the existence of 
the Dodo, quoted by them, is zo¢ unlike the proof of the existence 
of great sea-serpents. If they, however, had known and mentioned 
that a head and a foot of the Dodo are preserved in Kopenhague, 
