[The 10th. | THE VARIOUS EXPLANATIONS. 425 
of Cetacean Marsupials!! Did not Mr. Newman's suggestion origin- 
ate in the two facts 1. That he himself thought the sea-serpent 
to be an Enaliosaurian, and 2. That Prof. Owen asserted that the 
sea-serpent of Captain M’Quian, according to his description and 
figures, must be a mammal? I think Mr. Newman reasoned 
further: “well, why should the Enaliosaurians not be mammals?” 
“The enormous length of the animal, three times that of a boa, 
militates against this hypothesis’, viz. of being a boa. This is no 
argument. In the time that only calamaries were known of 6 or 7 
feet length, with arms of 10 or 11 feet, nobody had ever dreamt 
that there existed really individuals of 30 feet in length with long 
arms of 50 feet! 
It is evident that Mr. Nrwman was wrongly informed about the 
Saccopharynx flagellum, for this animal is a kind of fish, belong- 
ing to the eel-tribe, however not in the least resembling an eel in 
its external characters, and not a black szake! 
The “separate essay, now preparing for the press’ as far as I 
_ know has never been published. 
The quotation of the Jchthyosaurus shows us that Mr. Newman 
was unwilling to give up his first suggestion. The evidence, re- 
ferred to by him, where the sea-serpent had apparently two flap- 
pers near the head, is the same as that referred to by Dr. Coas- 
WELL, (see pp. 409, 411, and n°. 115.). 
After observing that other sea-serpents, e. g. that of Captain 
M’QuuHaxE don’t come up to his Ichthyosaurian suggestion, Mr. 
Newman concludes that “the enormous creatures in all probability 
will eventually be found to constitute several genera and species!!! 
The favourite Plesiosaurian hypothesis is also spoken of by the 
writer of the “/teply to Mr. Newman's Inquiries respecting the 
bones of the Stronsa Animal’ (which I have inserted in my Chap- 
ter on Would-be sea-serpents). He says: 
“But we must now conclude with the single remark, that if 
the Stronsa Animal was not a shark, it was certainly not the great 
sea-serpent, which, if it does exist, will most likely be allied to 
the Plesiosauri of by-gone days, and to which the animal seen by 
the Rev. Mr. Maclean, Higg Island (Wern. Mem. I. p. 442), seems 
to have borne a strong resemblance.” Jas. C. Howpen. 
As to the animal of Mr. Macngan, see our n°. 31. 
Mr. Newman in the Preface to the Zoologist tor 1849, wrote 
the following about the Reptiles mentioned in this volume. The 
words are worth quoting. 
