AT70 THE VARIOUS EXPLANATIONS. [The 19th. | 
tour and nature of objects at sea, the resemblance to the head of 
some animal was so close that the course of the vessel was changed 
and the object in due time overhauled. This latter, therefore, pre- 
sents an example of a case, the details of which, when related, 
tempt people to maintain without further parley, that sea-serpents 
always resolve themselves into inanimate objects of one kind or 
another.” 
The extreme rapidity which is reported of the sea-serpent, banishes 
at once the idea of a dead organism. 
The twentieth explanation is: a mass of flying birds, of Mr. 
JosEPpH Drew, who wrote in WVature of the 5th. of September, 1878: 
“On Monday, August 5, a number of geologists crossed in the 
Folkestone boat to Boulogne, to study the imteresting formations 
of that neighbourhood, and, when about three or four miles from 
the French coast, one of these gentlemen suddenly exclained, “Look 
at that extraordinary object passing across the bow of the steamer 
about a mile or a mile and a-half in advance of us!” On turning 
in this direction there was seen an immense serpent apparently 
about a furlong in length, rushing furiously along at the rate of 
fifteen or twenty miles an hour; it was blackish in front and paler 
behind; its elongated body was fairly on the surface of the water 
and it progressed with an undulating or quivering motion, mirum 
erat spectaculum sane.” 
“Of course many suppositions were immediately started to ac- 
count for this extraordinary phenomenon, but they quickly chan- 
ged and settled into the fixed idea that the object before them 
could be nothing less than the great sea-serpent himself; for — 
“Prone on the flood, extended long and large, 
“Lay floating, many a rood, in bulk as huge 
“As whom the fables name of monstrous size, 
“Leviathan, which God of all his works 
“Created hugest, that swim the ocean stream.” 
“The writer fortunately had with him one of Baker's best opera- 
glasses, and, after a few moment’s use of this little instrument, 
the wonder was satisfactorily resolved. The first half of the monster 
was dark and glittermg and the remainder of fainter hue, gradu- 
ally, fading towards the tail. The glass did not determine the 
matter until the extreme end was reached, and then it was seen 
