vi 
PREFACE. 
late experienced editor of the Zoologist, Mr. Edward 
Newman, a man of wonderful power of mind, of great 
judgment, a profound thinker, and an able writer. At a 
time when, as he said, " the shafts of ridicule were launched 
against believers and unbelievers in the sea-serpent in a 
very pleasing and impartial manner," he, in the true spirit 
of philosophical inquiry, in 1847, opened the columns of 
his magazine to correspondence on this topic, and all the 
more recent reports of marine monsters having been seen 
are therein recorded. To him, therefore, the fullest 
acknowledgments are due. 
The great cuttles, also, have been the subject of articles 
in various magazines, notably one by Mr. W. Saville 
Kent, F.L.S., in the ' Popular Science Review ' of April, 
1874, and a chapter in my little book on the Octopus, 
published in 1873, is also devoted to them. In writing 
of them as the living representatives of the kraken, and as 
having been frequently mistaken for the "sea-serpent," 
my deductions have been drawn from personal knowledge, 
and an intimate acquaintance with the habits, form, and 
structure of the animals described. It was only by 
watching the movements of specimens of the common 
squid " {Loligo viilgaris), and the " little squid" (Z. media), 
which lived in the tanks of the Brighton Aquarium, that 
I recognised in their peculiar habit of occasionally 
swimming half-submerged, with uplifted caudal extremity, 
and trailing arms, the fact that I had before me the " sea- 
serpent " of many a well-authenticated anecdote. A mere 
knowledge of their form and anatomy after death had 
never suggested to me that which became at once apparent 
when I saw them in life. 
It is a pleasure to me to acknowledge gratefully the 
kindness I have met with in connection with the illustra- 
