4A6 THE VARIOUS EXPLANATIONS, [The i 
The figure represents the Hurypharyna pelecanoides of VAILLANT, 
taken from Finnot’s La vie au fond des mers. GUNTHER, in’ his 
Deepsea-jishes of the Challenger says on p. 262 of Saccopharynx 
Bairdii (synonym with WSaccopharyne flagellum): “It is uncertain 
whether these specimens are specifically distinct from Saccopharyne 
pelecanoides Vaiuuant.” | therefore don’t hesitate to put before 
my readers the above figure as a representation of the general 
outlines of Saccopharyne flagellum. 
The fifteenth explanation is suggested by the same anonymous 
writer on the same occasion, who wishing to explain the appear- 
ance of the sea-serpent near the coasts of Africa, asks whether 
“some land species, as the boas, among which are individuals of 
forty feet in length, may not sometimes betake themselves to the 
sea, or even transport themselves from one continent to another”. 
Probably he “adduced” this suggestion “of a large boa constrictor 
having been conveyed to the island of St. Vincent, twisted round 
the trunk of a cedar tree, carried away, as is supposed, from the 
banks of some South-American river. This occurrence is quoted by 
Sir Charles Lyell from the Zoological Journal of December, 1827. 
(Principles of Geology.)” 
Mr. Gossg in his Romance of Natural History after having shown 
that the sea-serpent cannot be a kind of true sea-snake (Family 
Hydrophidae) because “none of these are known to extend a few 
feet in length and, so far as we know, none of them have been 
found in the Atlantic”, goes on saying: “It is remarkable, howe- 
ver, that a record exists of a serpent having been seen in the 
very midst of the North Atlantic’. And instead of relating now the 
historical fact of the boa constrictor, above mentioned, he quotes 
the report of the sea-serpent seen from the General Coole, (n°. 25) 
and goes on saying: 
“It augments very considerably the value of this incident, that _ 
no suggestion of identity with the Norwegian dragon appears to 
have occurred to the observer; he speaks of it of “a snake’, and 
nothing more; the dimensions alone appear to have excited sur- 
prise, “sixteen or eighteen feet”, and these are by no means ex- 
_ travagant.”’ | 
“On the whole I am disposed to accept this case as that of a 
true serpent — perhaps the Boa Murina, one of the largest known, 
