294, THE VARIOUS ACCOUNTS, [1 848.] 
they would have been right. This is zo¢ the case with the sea- 
serpent. As far as I know, there is not one material proof of the 
existence of sea-serpents. But it is with the sea-serpent just as 
with the different accounts and pictures of the Dodo, “throughout 
all which 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 hope that every-one who has read all the accounts I hav 
collected and published in this volume, and thoroughly studied 
the figures, will grant that there is no question of “assumed 
evidences of the existence of some anomalous monsters’. 
LID. — 1848? — In the Zoologist of 1849, p. 2356, we read: 
“Hnormous undescribed animal apparently allied to the Enaliosauri, 
seen in the Gulf of California. — Captain the Hon. George Hope 
states that when in H. M. S. “Fly’, m the Gulf of California, the 
sea being perfectly calm and transparent, he saw at the bottom a 
large marine animal with the head and general figure of the alli- 
gator, except that the neck was much longer, and that instead of 
legs the creature had four large flappers, somewhat like those of 
turtles, the anterior pair being larger than the posterior; the 
creature was distinctly visible, and all its movements could be 
observed with ease; it appeared to be pursuing its prey at the 
bottom of the sea; its movements were somewhat serpentine, and 
an appearance of annulations, or ring-like divisions of the body, 
was distinctly perceptible. Captam Hope made this relation in 
company, and as a matter of conversation. When I heard it from 
the gentleman to whom it was narrated, I enquired whether Cap- 
tam Hope was acquainted with those remarkable fossil animals 
Ichthyosaurt and Plesiosaurz, the supposed forms of which so 
nearly correspond with what he describes as having seen alive, 
and I cannot find that he had heard of them; the alligator being 
the only animal he mentioned as bearing a partial similarity to 
the creature in question.” 
Mr. Newman, the Editor of this Journal, considers this testi- 
mony “in all respects, the most interesting natural-history-fact of the 
present century’ (Zoologist, 1849, Preface, Nov. 11). 
Though I think that all reports of sea-serpents are very inter- 
