PN*. 145. | REPORTS AND PAPERS. hers 
they leap clear out of the water, I am convinced that the sea-serpent 
sometimes elevates its fore part to a considerable height as was 
seen by Ecupx (n° 5), Captain Apams (n° 121) and Captain Drevar. 
If the height of the sea-serpent rising in the air was really sixty 
feet, Captain Drzvar must have seen the animal’s fore-flappers, 
though he did not mention them. Else I think that he exaggerated, 
that the height did not surpass forty feet and that the flappers 
remained under water. See also N° 31. — 
14G. — 1876, September 11. — In the number of the 15th. 
of January, 1877, of the eho appeared an article by Mr. R. A. 
Proctor entitled “Strange Sea-Monsters’, wherein he quotes the 
following report. I have not been able to consult the eho, but I 
have found it cited in Mr. Wrrson’s Lezsure Time Studies. Here 
no date, except that of September 11th., is given, but as the report 
appeared in the January number of 1877 of the Acho, I conclude 
that the appearance took place in September of 1876. 
“Soon after the British steamship JVestor anchored at Shanghai, 
last October, John K. Webster, the captain, and James Anderson, 
the ship’s surgeon, appeared before Mr. Donald Spence, Acting Law 
Secretary in the British Supreme Court, and made affidavit to the 
following effect: 
“On September 11, at 10.30 a. m., fifteen miles north-west of 
North Sand Lighthouse, in the Malacca Straights, the weather 
bemg fine and the sea smooth, the captain saw an object which 
had been pointed out by the third officer as “a shoal!” Surprised 
at findmg a shoal in such a well-known track, I watched the 
object, and found that it was in motion, keeping up the same 
speed with the ship, and retaining about the same distance as 
first seen. The shape of the creature I would compare to that of a 
gigantic frog. The head, of a pale yellowish colour, was about 
twenty feet in length, and six feet of the crown were above the 
water. | tried in vain to make out the eyes and mouth; the mouth 
may, however, have been below water. The head was immediately 
connected with the body, without any indication of a neck. The 
body was about forty-five or fifty feet long, and of an oval shape, 
perfectly smooth, but there may have been a slight ridge along 
the spine. The back rose some five feet above the surface. An im- 
mense tail, fully one hundred and fifty feet in length, rose afew 
inches above the water. This tail I saw distinctly from its junction 
