384. THE VARIOUS EXPLANATIONS, [The 1st. ] 
upraised head, like that of a horse, was seen preceding them, it 
was either unconnected with them, or it certainly was not that of 
a snake; for no serpent could throw its body into those vertical 
undulations. ” 
I repeat here what I have said above (n°. 10): If Mr. Les 
wishes to explain the coils by reference to porpoises, he ought to 
tell me what was the head that resembled a horse’s head. 
Again on p. 96 of his work, after having concluded that the 
great calamaries “have played the part of the sea-serpent in many 
well-authenticated incidents’, he says: “In other cases, such as 
some of those mentioned by Pontoppidan, the supposed vertical 
undulations of the snake seen out of water have been the burly 
bodies of so many porpoises swimming in line — the connecting 
undulations beneath the surface have been supplied by the imagin- 
ation.” 
After an alleged appearance of a sea-serpent near Great Orme's 
Head (n°. 155), Mr. SrpEBoruam, a correspondent of Mature writes 
in this journal (18838, Febr. 1): 
“T have seen four or five times something like what your cor- 
respondent describes and figures, at Llandudno, crossing from the 
Little Orme’s Head across the bay, and have no doubt whatever 
that the phenomenon was simply a shoal of porpoises. I never, 
however, saw the head your correspondent gives, but in other 
respects what I have seen was exactly the same; the motions of 
porpoises might easily be taken for those of a serpent; once I saw 
them from the top of the Little Orme, they came very near the 
base of the rock, and kept the line nearly half across the bay.” 
Here we have a remarkable assertion: “I never, however, saw the 
head.” I remind here my readers of Mr. Cummines’ question “who 
ever saw a row of porpoises with a head of a seal?” 
IT need not say that porpoises swimming in line, do so very 1- 
regularly. They are in the habit of continually throwing up their 
bodies half above the surface of the water, and so their backfin is 
clearly visible, but nowhere the sea-serpent is said to have on each 
coil a backfin. Sometimes one porpoise is only visible, a moment 
afterwards three, eight, or more, but never the whole row is seen 
at once, while the undulations of the sea-serpent are constantly 
visible above the surface, moving with the greatest regularity. 
Every one will feel that this explanation is not satisfactory; it does 
not even explain a single observation. Besides, how to explain the 
swan-like neck, so often seen by reference to porpoises? To avoid 
