[The 22d.] THE VARIOUS EXPLANATIONS. 48] 
explained by him to be “evidently a great squid seen under cir- 
cumstances similar to those described by Hans Eeupn”. 
Captain Harrinevon’s sea-serpent (n°. 131), according to Mr. 
Ler, “was evidently, again, a large calamary raising its caudal 
extremity and fin above the surface, and discolouring the water 
by discharging its ink.” 
Considering and weighing various explanations hitherto given, 
Mr. Lee concludes: “I am convinced that, whilst naturalists have 
been searching amongst the vertebrata for a solution of the problem, 
the great unknown, and therefore unrecognized, calamaries by their 
elongated cylindrical bodies and peculiar mode of swimming, have 
played the part of the sea-serpent in many a_well-authenticated 
incident.” | 
In answering, again, Mr. Gossz’s question: “To which of the 
recognized classes of created beings can this huge rover of the 
ocean be referred?” he says: “I reply: To the Cephalopoda. There 
is not one of the above judiciously summarized characteristics that 
is not supplied by the great calamary, and its ascertained habits 
and peculiar mode of locomotion.” 
With these “above summarized characteristics’ are meant those 
which Mr. Gossz enumerates in his Romance of Natural History 
(see p. 318 of the present volume), but which, as we know, are 
taken by him from only six reports of true sea-serpents, and from 
a report of a would-be sea-serpent ! 
The reader will remember that, on one occasion, I explained a 
would-be sea-serpent by reference to a large calamary, because the 
head was described “acute” and the colour “crimson”. All true 
sea-serpents are brownish black, and only in case the animal had 
swum for a long time in the sun and partly above the surface of 
the water, the colour is yellowish, grey or greyish. It is true that 
this colour partly agrees with that of a calamary, when quite at 
rest or when dead; but generally, when the animal is in motion, 
and especially in emotion, the colour becomes a reddish-purple or 
crimson-red. Moreover the long neck, the mane, the extraordinary 
long tail, the four flappers, are not explained by reference to a 
calamary. 
The twenty-third cxplanation is proposed by Mr. Srarues V. 
Woop, Jun. in Wature of November 18th., 1880. His article on 
the “Order Zeuglodontia”’ closes with the following parenthesis : 
31 
