[The 4th. | THE VARIOUS EXPLANATIONS. 393 
“It will be asked how I account for the apparent absence of 
motion of the fore part of the body, and for the existence of a 
dorsal or back fin. I may suggest, in reply, that the simple move- 
ments of the laterally compressed tail, altogether concealed beneath 
the surface, would serve to propel the animal forward without 
causing the front portion of the body to exihit any great or appar- 
ent motion; whilst the appearence of a fin may possibly be ex- 
plained on the presumption that sea-weed may have become attach- 
ed to the animal, or, that the upper ridge of the vertically 
compressed tail extended far forward and appeared as a fin-like 
structure.” 
“The most important feature in my theory, however, in which 
I may be desired to lead evidence, and that which really consti- 
tutes the strong points of this explanation, is the probability. of 
the development to a huge or gigantic size of ordinary marine 
serpents. This point is one in support of which zoology and phy- 
siology will offer strong and favourable testimony. There is no 
single fact, so far as I am aware, which militates in the slightest 
degree against the supposition that giant members of the sea-serpents 
may be occasionally developed. The laws which regulate human 
growth and structure, and in virtue of which veritable “sons of 
Anak”, like Chang the Chinese giant, and the Russian giant, 
differmg widely in proportions from their fellow-mortals, are devel- 
oped, must be admitted to hold good for the entire animal king- 
dom. There is, in fact, no valid reason against the supposition 
that a giant serpent is occasionally produced, just as we familiarly 
observe almost every kind of animal to produce now and then a 
member of the race which mightily exceeds the proportions of its 
neighbours. But clearer still does our case become when we con- 
sider that we have proof of the most absolute and direct kind of 
the giant development of such forms as cuttle-fishes, which have 
thus appeared as if in realisation of Victor Hugo’s “devil-fish”, 
which plays so important a part in that strange weird tale, the 
“Toilers of the Sea’. At the present time we are in full possession 
of the details of several undoubted cases of the occurrence of cuttle- 
fishes of literally gigantic proportions, — developed, in fact, to 
an extent justly comparable to that of the supposed “sea-serpent”, 
when the latter is compared with its ordinary representatives of 
the tropical oceans.” 
“Is there anything more improbable, I ask, in the idea of a 
gigantic development of an ordinary marine snake into a veritable 
