|The 10th. ] THE VARIOUS EXPLANATIONS, 427 
insensibly into a compact and moderately slender body, which 
carried two pairs of paddles, very much like those of a sea-turtle, 
and terminated behind in a gradually attenuated tail”. 
“Thus, if the Plesiosaur could have been seen alive, you would 
have discerned nearly its total length at the surface of the water, 
propelled at a rapid rate, without any undulation, by an apparatus 
altogether invisible, —— the powerful paddles beneath; while the 
entire serpentine neck would probably be projected obliquely, car- 
rying the reptilian head, with an eye of moderate aperture, and 
a mouth whose gape did not extend beyond the eye. Add to this 
a covering of the body not formed of scales, bony plates, or other 
form of solidified integument, but a yielding, leathery skin, prob- 
ably black and smooth, lke that of a whale; give the creature 
a length of some sixty feet or more, and you would have before 
you almost the very counterpart of the apparition that wrought 
such amazement on board the Daedalus. The position of the nos- 
trils at the summit of the head indicates that on first coming on 
the surface from the depths of the sea, the animal would spout 
in the manner of the whales, —a circumstance reported by some 
observers of the sea-serpent.” 
“I must confess that I am myself far more disposed to acquiesce 
in this hypothesis than in any other that has been mooted. Not 
that I would identify the animal seen with the actual P/eszosaurs 
of the lias. None of them yet discovered appear to exceed thirty- 
five feet in length, which is scarcely half sufficient to meet the 
exigencies of the case. I should not look for any species, scarcely 
even any genus, to be perpetuated from the oolitic period to the 
present. Admitting the actual continuation of the order Hxaliosauria, 
it would be, I think, quite in conformity with general analogy 
to find important generic modifications, probably combining some 
salient features of several extinct forms. Thus the little known Pho- 
saur had many of the peculiarities of the Plesiosaur, without its 
extraordinarily elongated neck, while it vastly exceeded it im di- 
mensions. What if the existing form should be essentially a P/e- 
siosaur, with the colossal magnitude of a Phosaur?” 
“here seems to be no real structural difficulty in such a sup- 
position except the “mane”, or waving appendage, which has so 
frequently been described by those who profess to have seen the 
modern animal. This, however, is a difficulty of ignorance, rather 
than of contradiction. We do not know that the smooth integument 
of the Lnahosaurs was destitute of any such appendage, and I do 
