V. 
The various explanations hitherto given. 
T have found the first explanation given about the Sea-Serpent 
in the feport of the Committee of 1817, where we read an extract 
from a M. S. journal of the Rev. Wizi1am Jenks, which he com- 
municated in a letter to the Hon. Judge Davis, and which letter 
is printed there. It runs as follows: 
“A gentleman of intelligence (Rev. Alden Bradford of Wiscasset, 
now Secretary of the Commonwealth ,) inquired of Mr. Cummings, 
whether the appearance might not be produced by a number of 
porpoises, following each other in a train.” 
This passage from the private journal was written in Sept. 10, 
1809; but after having consulted Situman’s American Journal of 
Science and the Arts, Vol. Il, Boston 1819 (1820), we are con- 
vinced that Mr. Braprorp’s inquiry of Mr. Cummines took place 
before Aug. 1803. 
Fig. 52 shows my readers a porpoise. 
As we read in ScuiErcen’s Mssai sur la physionomie des Serpens, 
p. 517, note, Prrer Ascantus in his cones rerum naturahum 
Cahier V, Copenhague, 1805, says: 
“In summer porpoises approach the coasts and the fjords. They 
often meet in the open sea in troops of several scores, and when 
the weather is calm and fine, they range in a line after each other 
to play and to tumble: they then have the appearance of a chain 
of little eminences floating on the surface of the water; some fish- 
ermen of the North, seeing them at a great distance, took this 
resemblance for an immense animal and gave it the name of sea- 
serpent.” 
Again in the letter from Mr. S. Perkins to Mr. E. Everert, 
dated August 20, 1817, we read: 
“All these facts, however, were loose, and from the variety of 
