[The 18th. | THE VARIOUS EXPLANATIONS. AG3 
do not consider myself competent to express an opinion. I am 
quite willing for the present to allow every sea-serpent to hold on 
its own course; hereafter a better opportunity may be afforded on 
comparing and arranging the conflicting evidence already published 
in the “Zoologist’’.” 
The ribbon-fish hypothesis gradually takes a firmer hold on the 
unbelievers, no doubt, at it seems more plausible than the Plesio- 
saurus-one. An inhabitant of Cape Town wrote the following note 
which I have found in Wature of the Ist. August, 1872: 
“The South-African Museum, Cape Town, recently received a 
specimen of the Ribbon Fish (Gymnoterus) fifteen feet long with- 
out the tail. It appears that this fish is known to distant inland 
fishermen as being forty feet long, and from its slender shape and 
snake-like movement is probably the “sea-serpent” of late years so 
minutely described by navigators. From its head there is erected 
a plume of flexible, rose-coloured spines, and from head to tail 
along its back there is a conspicuous mane-like fin. Its general 
colour is like burnished silver. The eye is large and silvery, and 
the profile of the head comports well with that of the horse. The 
specimen could not be preserved, but there are two smaller spec- 
imens in the Museum.” 
Mr. AnpREw Whitson in his turn believes (see Mature of Sept. 
12, 1878) that: 
“A long tape-fish” (which is the same as a ribbon-fish) “might 
do duty in the eyes of non zoological observers for a sea-serpent.” 
In his Letsure Time Studies he returns to his idea: 
“A visit paid to the Newcastle Museum of Natural History , on 
which occasion I had the pleasure of inspecting a dried and pre- 
served ribbon or tape-fish of large size, forcibly confirmed an idea 
that such an animal, developed to a gigantic size, and beheld from 
a distance by persons unskilled in natural history, — and who 
would, therefore, hardly dream of associating the elongated being 
before them with their ordinary ideas of fish-form and appearance, — 
might account for certain of the tales of sea-serpents which have 
been brought under our notice. I had been specially struck with 
the mention, in several accounts of sea-serpents, of a very long 
back fin, sometimes termed a “mane”, and of a banded body cov- 
ered with tolerably smooth skin; whilst in several instances the 
description given of the heads of the sea-monsters closely correspond 
with the appearance of the head of the tape-fishes. These fishes 
have further been described by naturalists as occasionally having 
