Kneeland.] 338 [March 18, 



Prof. Agassiz, in 1849, in a lecture in Philadelphia, is reported to 

 have said, " I have asked myself whether there is not such an animal 

 as the sea-serpent. There are many who will doubt the existence of 

 such a creature until it can be brought under the dissecting knife ; 

 but it has been seen by so many on whom we may rely, that it is 

 wrong to doubt any longer. The truth is that if a naturalist had to 

 sketch the outlines of an Ichthyosaurus or Plesiosaurus from the 

 remains we have of them, he would make a drawing very similar to 

 the sea-serpent as it has been described. There is reason to believe 

 that the parts are soft and perishable, but I still consider it probable 

 that it will be the good fortune of some person on the coast of Nor- 

 way or North America to find a living representative of this type of 

 reptile, which is thought to have died out." 



In his " Geological Researches," 1871, Prof. Agassiz writes, twenty- 

 two years later, " If there exists any animal in our waters not yet 

 known to naturalists, answering to the description of the ' sea- 

 serpent,' it must be closely allied to the Plesiosaurus. The occur- 

 rence in the fresh waters of North America of a fish, the Lepidosteus, 

 which is closely allied to the fossil fishes found with the Plesiosaurus 

 in the Jurassic beds, renders such a supposition probable." 



The undoubted rarity of such an animal would account for the 

 failure of any fragment to find its way into collections; many ceta- 

 ceans are so uncommon that only single specimens have ever been 

 seen by naturalists, and some have been entirely unknown until 

 within fifty years. Inhabiting the ocean, the chances of its body 

 floating long enough for any part to be cast on shore would be very 

 small; the rocky coasts which it seems to frequent are unfavorable 

 for the accidental casting up of any fragment. In the present crea- 

 tion, were it not for the persecution of man, the bones of seals and 

 whales, of the beaver, of the cougar, of monkeys and elephants, 

 would hardly ever be found in the places thickly inhabited by them. 

 The non-occurrence of any fragments, therefore, is of little weight 

 in disproving the existence of an animal, even of man himself. 



The cetacean Zeuglodon of the tertiary fulfils some of the indica- 

 tions of the prevalent idea of the sea-serpent, and there is no reason 

 a priori why a slender and lengthened mammalian form should not 

 exist among the present cetaceans. The marine saurians of the sec- 

 ondary were replaced by the marine mammals of the tertiary and 

 present ages. On the generally admitted laws of palaeontology there 

 would be a greater probability of the Zeuglodon than of the Plesio- 



