[The 10th. | THE VARIOUS EXPLANATIONS. 415 
arches or elevations, rising above the water like a row of casks or 
buoys. The greater part of the evidence on the subject is contained, 
I believe, in Pontoppidan’s “Natural History of Norway” (1755), 
the “Report of a Committee of the Linnaean Society of New Eng- 
land relative to a large Marine Animal, supposed to be a Sea- 
Serpent, seen near Cape Ann, Massachusetts, in August, 1817” 
(Boston 1817), and the last volume of “The Zoologist” (1847). In 
the Scandinavian work the principal witness is Captain L. de Ferry, 
of the Navy, who thus describes an individual which he saw while 
in a boat, rowed by eight men, within six miles of Molde, in a 
calm hot day of August, 1747. “The head of the snake””..... &e. 
“The Report of the Linnaean Society of New England contains — 
the result of an inquiry’....... &e. 
“The tenor of the late observations in Norway recorded in the 
“Zoologist’ (Zool. 1604) certamly might justify the inference that 
these so remarkable prominences are not persistent, but depend , 
as suggested by the American functionary, on the mode of pro- 
gression practised at the moment. Anybody that had watched the 
lithe and varied curves of an otter mm the water can have no 
difficulty im recording together the different kinds of undulations 
to the sea-serpent. There is one particular of rare occurrence worthy 
of notice, in one of these later accounts, calling to mind a pecu- 
liarity in the description of the animal seen by Mr. Egede, a 
Greenland missionary and furnished to us with a copy of the figure, 
by Pontoppidan. This creature, of the unusual length of 600 feet, 
“had under its body two flappers, or perhaps two broad fins”. 
One of the recent narratives also states of the progressive move- 
ment, that it appeared to be produced “by the help of two fins” 
(Zool. 1607). Thus is offered a possible solution of the difficulty 
occasioned by captain M’Quhae’s specimen having advanced at a 
rapid rate, with 60 feet of the body a fleur d’eau, without any 
visible undulation.” (I, however, refer the reader to the report of 
1845, July 28). 
“Here I may refer to “The Description of an Animal stranded 
on the Island of Stronsa, in the year 1808” given in the first 
Volume of the “Wernerian Transactions” by the late eminent Dr. 
Barclay. Evidently disposed to believe that this animal was a sea- 
serpent, Dr. Barclay indignantly repudiates the opmion of Mr. 
Home, that it was nothing more than a shark (Squalus maximus). 
Figures of the two are shown in juxtaposition, for the purpose of 
constrasting them, and to all appearance their respective peculia- 
