4AA, THE VARIOUS EXPLANATIONS. |The 13th. ] 
Of the report of Captain Cox (n°. 152) Mr. Woop says: 
“In this account we have almost a duplicate of that of Major 
Senior in the dropping of the animal with a great splash into the 
water prior to its darting forward under it; while the boiling of 
the water around, which is so inconsistent with the motion of a 
snake in water (which I have more than once seen) evidently 
resulted from the strokes of the cetacean tail, and possibly also 
from those of the paddles, as in the case witnessed by Major Senior. 
The black colour also is described in both cases.” 
In treating of this report I have already expressed my opinion 
that the boiling of the water must have been caused by the four 
flappers together. It is very natural that Mr. Woop who represents 
the sea-serpent as a dolphin-shaped animal, without a backfin, and 
with a long neck, sets much value on the cetacean tail. Finally 
he says: 
“Judging from the figures which accompany this and my pre- 
vious letter” (figg. 48, 49, 46, and reduced sketches of figg. 28 
and 30), “it appears to me that the external form of the animal 
must resemble the well-known Plesiosaurus, if we imagine the 
hinder (femuroid) paddles of that AHuahosaurian to be absent, and 
a cetacean tail (which is their homologue), to be present in their 
stead. Since in the direction of the Porpesse the cetacean in external 
form so closely simulates the fish, so it may in another direction 
simulate this Mesozoic marine saurian, or the gigantic Hlasmosaurus 
of the American cretaceous formation, of which a nearly perfect 
skeleton is described by Prof. Cope as forty-five feet m length, the 
neck constituting twenty-two of this length.” 
And he expresses his firm opinion: 
“There ought, I submit, to remain no longer with naturalists 
any doubt that a hitherto unknown group of carnivorous cetaceans, 
with necks of extraordinary length, imhabit the ocean.” 
In the middle of November, 1881, appeared the first number 
of the Album der Natuur for 1882, and in this issue the author 
of the present Volume treated of the probability of the existence 
of the great sea-serpent. Unfortunately he, who at that time was 
only a student of Natural History at the Utrecht University, really 
believed the animal of Stronsa, of 1808, to be a sea-serpent, and 
was misled by the hoax of Captain SzaBury of which he only 
knew the last part, found by him in the Illustrated London News. 
In his firm belief, however, he examined such characters, taken — 
from these tales and from nearly 60 reports then known to him, 
