[1879. | REPORTS AND PAPERS. 355 
unwonted and unusual kind. That “something” has assuredly been 
seen, must be the verdict on this first issue. What that “some- 
thing’ is or was, and whether or not the evidence will support 
the opinion that the appearances described bear out the existence 
of a “sea-serpent’ in the flesh, form points for discussion in the 
next instance. ” : 
Mr. AnpREw Witson mentions some pages further on a curious 
case of fear of popular ridicule in telling that | 
“one ship-captain related that when a sea-serpent had been seen 
by his crew from the deck of the vessel, he remained below; 
since, to use his own words, “had I said I had seen the sea- 
serpent, I should have been considered to be a warranted lar all 
my life after!” | 
In examining whether that “something” was a dead or living 
organism, Mr. Winson concludes that: | 
“Numerous cases exist in which the object, presumed to be a 
living being, has been scrutinized so closely that, save on the sup- 
position that senses have played their owners false, or that minds 
have given way to an unaccountable impulse for lying, we must 
face and own the belief that living animals have been seen.” 
He now speaks of a few accounts, viz. the various reports of 
the animal seen by the officers of the Daedalus (n°. 118), by the 
crew of the Paulne (n°. 144, 145), and by the captain and the 
surgeon of the JVestor (n°. 146), and explains them in his own 
way, believing that these sea-serpents were gigantically developed 
sea-snakes, or a great calamary. Next he treats of the appearance 
of the animal as reported by the officers of the Osborne (n°. 148), 
explaining it to be a tape-fish. Finally he defends his hypothesis of 
gigantically developed sea-snakes and ribbon-fishes. These parts, 
however, I have inserted in my Chapter on various explanations. 
In a review of Mr. Anprew Wrtson’s Lezsure Time Studies, 
which I have found in Nature of the 30th. of January, 1879, 
Vol. XIX, the following is written about the chapter on the sea- 
serpent: 
The lecture on “The Sea-Serpents of Science” is interesting, both 
as giving a very fair summary of the most recent evidence on this 
subject, and as showing that the age of incredulity is past, and 
that naturalists are now prepared to admit that several distinct 
