[ N°. 144.] REPORTS AND PAPERS. Dai 
the master and crew of the Paulne into conformity with any pre- 
conceived idea. They may have seen a veritable sea-serpent; or 
they may have witnessed the amours of two whales, and have seen 
the great creatures rolling over and over that they might breathe 
alternately by the blow-hole of each coming to the surface of the 
water; or the supposed coils of the snake may have been the arms 
of a great calamary, cast over and around the huge cetacean. The 
other two appearances — Ist., the animal “seen shooting itself 
along the surface with head and neck raised’, and 2nd., the eleva- 
tion of the body to a considerable height, as in Hgede’s sea mon- 
ster, would certainly accord with this last hypothesis; but taking 
the statement as it stands, it must be left for further elucidation’. 
It is remarkable that Mr. Lez who generally explains sea-serpents 
by calamaries, cannot give an explanation of ¢/is sea-serpent, with 
which he himself is satisfied. “They may have seen a veritable sea- 
serpent’. This phrase is very surprising, for Mr. Lex has not yet 
explained what zs a veritable sea-serpent. Or did he mean a verit- 
able sea-snake? This is improbable, for he knows very well that 
the largest snake which frequents the sea, the Hunectes murina, 
does not measure above 25 feet, so that it is not able to encircle 
a spermwhale, whose circumference is about forty feet. “Or they 
may have witnessed the amours of two whales, and have seen the 
great creatures rolling over and over that they might breathe alter- 
nately by the blow-hole of each coming to the surface of the water’. 
This phrase, however, does not give any explanation of the long 
neck, the tail, the mouth being constantly open, the thick coils, 
which were coloured longitudinally, partly black, partly white, so 
that the captain spoke of a black back and a white belly!” “Or 
the supposed coils of the snake may have been the arms of a great 
calamary, cast over and around the huge cetacean.” This too is 
impossible, for the circumference of the serpent was estimated at 
seven or eight feet, and no arm of a calamary has a greater 
circumference than about sixteen inches, even that of the largest 
known specimens, which have a total length of eighty feet! For 
a moment I will leave Mr. Lex in his supposition that the animal , 
seen on the 13th. of July, was a swimming calamary or a similar 
individual standing upright with its tail in the air, and pass to his 
last phrase: “but, taking the statement as it stands, it must be 
left for further elucidation”. This, now, I will try to do. But first 
I beg the reader to direct his attention to the sperm-whales. 
The sperm-whales may attain a length of 60 to 70 feet, with a 
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