- Oe 
, ; ae 
- o + 
452 THE VARIOUS EXPLANATIONS. [The 16th. | 
him into your greenhouse, and show him some very beautiful 
thing in blossom; keep him looking at it for some ten minutes 
without a hint of what you are thinking of; then take him into 
your drawing-room, put paper and colours before him, and say, 
“Make me a sketch of that plant you have just seen!’ When it 
is done, take it to a botanist, and ask him to give you the char- 
acters of the genus and species from the sketch; or compare it 
yourself with the original, and note how many and what ludicrous 
blunders had been made in details, while there was a fair general 
correctness. ” 
“Viewed in this light, it will be manifest how inefficient the 
sketch made on board the Daedalus must be for minute characters; 
and particularly those which in the diagnosis above I have marked 
with italics. Yet these are the characters mainly relied on te prove 
the mammalian nature of the animal. Some of these characters 
could not possibly have been determined at two hundred yards’ 
distance. I say “mainly relied on’; because there is the manelike 
appendage yet to be accounted for. This is a strong point certainly 
in favour of a mammalian, and of a phocal nature; whether it 
decides the question, however, I will presently examine.’ 
“The head in either of the large sketches (those, I mean, in 
which the creature is represented in the sea) does not appear to 
me at all to resemble that of a seal; nor do I see a “vaulted 
cranium’. The summit of the head does not rise above the level 
of the summit of the neck; in other words, the vertical diameter 
of the head and neck are equal, while there are indications that 
the occiput considerably exceeds the neck in ¢ransverse diameter. 
This is not the case with any seal, but it is eminently character- 
istic of eels, of many serpents, and some lizards. Let the reader 
compare the lower figure (///ustrated London News, Oct. 28, 1848) 
with that of the Broadnosed Eel in Yarrell’s British Fishes (ed. 
i. Vol. u. p. 396). The head of some of the scincoid lizards (the 
Jamaican Celestus ociduus, for instance) is not at all unlike that 
represented; it is full as vaulted, and as short, but a little more 
pointed, and with a flatter facial angle. On this point the Captain’s 
assertion corrects the drawing; for, in reply to Professor Owen, 
he distinctly asserts that “the head was flat, and not a capacious 
vaulted cranium;” and the description of Lieutenant Drummond , 
published before any strictures were made on the point, says, “the 
head... was long, pointed, and flattened at the top, perhaps 
ten feet in length, the upper jaw projecting considerably.” 
