PN ®.-119.] REPORTS AND PAPERS. 95 
esting natural-history facts, it is indisputable that this testimony 
is a very important one. If the reader for a moment brings before 
his mind the animal of the Daedalus, about eighty feet long, 
with a head of about three feet, a neck like the body of a ser- 
pent, the thickness behind the head being somewhat smaller than 
that of the head itself; at twenty feet in the rear of the head the 
body becoming at once much broader und provided there with 
two flappers; twenty feet more backwards again two flappers, and 
then a tail of about forty feet, ending in a point. If the reader 
now imagines this animal to be on the bottom of the sea, whilst 
he himself is placed on the deck of a vessel, the sea perfectly 
calm, is it not true that such an animal must make the impression 
of an alligator with a long neck, and having instead of paws flap- 
pers like those of a sea-turtle? If moreover the animal moved in 
vertical undulations, is it not very well conceivable and clear that, 
by the lght and shadow falling on the animal from above, the 
curves of the animal’s back (called dunches when it swims on the 
surface) must be taken as distinctly perceptible annulations or ring- 
like divisions of the body? I think that there can be no question 
but this animal was a sea-serpent. The reader will remember that 
PontoppipaN relates an account of a very young sea-serpent, eighteen 
feet in length, entangled in a fisherman’s net, “a worm with four 
paws on the belly’, and that the learned Bishop himself made the 
comparison: “thus it resembled a crocodile” ! 
120. — 1848, December 31. — (Lllustrated London News 
of 1849, April 14) 
“To the Editor of the Hlustrated London News.” 
“H. M. S. Plumper, Plymouth Harbour, April 10, 1849.” 
“Not having seen a sketch of the extraordinary creature , we passed 
between England and Lisbon, and being requested by several gentle- 
men to send you the rough one I made at the time, | shall feel 
much obliged by your giving it publicity in your instructive and 
amusing columns.” 
“On the morning of the 31th. December, 1848, in lat. 41° 13'N., 
and long 12° 31’ W., being nearly due West of Oporto, I saw a 
long black creature with a sharp head, moving slowly, I should 
think about two knots, through the water, in a north westerly 
direction, there being a fresh breeze at the time, and some sea 
