[The 22d.] THE VARIOUS EXPLANATIONS. 477 
serpent, or other great creatures at present unknown to science , 
and that I have no inclination to expla away that which others 
have seen, because I myself have not witnessed it. “Seeing is be- 
lieving’’, it is said, and it is not agreeable to have to tell a person 
that, im common parlance, he “must not trust his own eyes’. It 
seems presumptuous even to hint that one may know better what 
was seen than the person who saw it. And yet I am obliged to 
say, reluctantly and courteously, but most firmly and assuredly, 
that these perfectly credible eye-witnesses did not correctly interpret 
that which they witnessed. In these cases, it is not the eye which 
deceives, nor the tongue which is untruthful, but the imagination 
which is led astray by the association of the thing seen with an 
erroneous idea. 1 venture to say this, not with any insolent as- 
sumption of superior acumen, but because we now posses a key 
to the mystery which Archdeacon Deinbolt and his neighbours 
had not excess to, and which has only within the last few years 
been placed in our hands. The movements and aspect of their sea- 
monster are those of an animal with which we are now well ac- 
quainted, but of the existence of which the narrators of these 
occasional visitations were unaware; namely, the great calamary, 
the same which gave rise to the stories of the Kraken, and which 
has probably been a denizen of the Skandinavian seas and fjords 
from time immemorial. It must be remembered, as I have else- 
where said, that until the year 1873, notwithstanding the adventure 
of the A/ecton in 1861, a cuttle measuring in total length fifty or 
sixty feet was generally looked upon as equally mythical with the 
great sea-serpent. Both were popularly scoffed at, and to express 
belief in either was to incur ridicule. But in the year above men- 
tioned, specimens of even greater dimensions than those quoted 
were met with on the coasts of Newfoundland, and portions of 
them were deposited in museums, to silence the incredulous and 
interest zoologists. When Archdeacon Deinbolt published in 1846 
the declaration of Mr. Lund and his companions of the fishing 
excursion he and they knew nothing of there being such an animal. 
They had formed no conception of it, nor had they the instructive 
privilege, possessed of late years by the public in England, of 
bemg able to watch attentively, and at leisure, the habits and 
movements of these strangely modified mollusks living in great 
tanks of sea-water in aquaria. If they had been thus acquainted 
with them, I believe they would have recognized in their supposed 
snake the elongated body of a giant squid.” 
