[1883. | REPORTS AND PAPERS. ole 
size, may have their ordinary habitat in the great depths of the 
sea, and only occasionally come to the surface; and I think it not 
impossible that amongst them may be marine snakes of greater 
dimensions than we are aware of, and even a creature having close 
affinities with the old sea-reptiles whose fossil skeletons tell of their 
magnitude and abundance in past ages.” 
T am unable to follow out such a reasoning. 
156. — 1883, October 15?—The Graphic of 20th. October, 
1883, mentions, p. 387: 
“The inevitable sea-serpent has turned up again. This time he 
has been seen going down the Bristol Channel towards the Atlantic 
at the rate of twenty-five miles per hour, and afterwards he was 
noticed off the north coast of Cornwall. The monster was about 
half a mile long, and left a greasy trail behind him.” 
I have no doubt about the appearance of a sea-serpent in Bristol 
Channel, and a few hours or a day afterwards off the north coast 
of Cornwall, as several individuals have already been reported on 
the west coast of Great Britain. The greasy trail left behind it is 
not an improbability, but the length of half a mile is most probably 
an invention of the incredulous Editor of the Graphic! 
Mr. C. Honteu in his Reisschetsen wt Noorwegen in de Gids 
for 1884, p. 300 speaking of strange and violent motions in the 
water of the lake of Mjésen in Norway during perfectly calm 
weather tells us as a specimen of Norwegian superstition: 
“People ascribe these motions to sea-serpents, in which many 
persons in Norway firmly believe upon the authority of undeniable 
witnesses and their observations. One of the most famous of these 
monsters lived some centuries ago in the lake of Mjdsen, in the 
neighbourhood of Hamar, where it became entangled in the shallow. 
A monk killed it with arrow-shots in its eye, and the monster 
then floated to near the “Holy-Isle” to a place which is still called 
“Pilestéa’”’. And yet there is still a sea-serpent in the lake, which 
has coiled itself round the great bell of Hamar, which in the time 
of the seven years’ war was lowered to the bottom.” 
Mr. Honteu adds: 
