THE GREAT SEA SERPENT. 83 
the time, with some sea running. — Edgar Drummond, Lieut. 
H.M.S. 'Daedalus;' Southampton, Oct. 28, 1848." 
Statements so interesting and important, of course, 
elicited much correspondence and controversy. Mr. J. D. 
Morries Stirling, a director of the Bergen Museum, wrote 
to the Secretary of the British Admiralty, Captain 
Hamilton, R.N., saying that while becalmed in a yacht 
between Bergen and Sogne, in Norway, he had seen, three 
years previously, a large fish or reptile of cylindrical form 
(he would not say " sea serpent ") ruffling the otherwise 
smooth surface of the fjord. No head was visible. This 
appears to have been, like the others from the same 
locality, a large calamary. Mr. Stirling unaware, doubt- 
less, that Mr. Edward Newman, editor of the Zoologist, 
had previously propounded the same idea, suggested that 
the supposed serpent might be one of the old marine 
reptiles, hitherto supposed only to exist in the fossil state. 
This letter was published in the Illustrated News of Oc- 
tober 28th, and four days afterwards, November 2nd, a 
letter signed F. G. S. appeared in the Times, in which the 
same idea was mooted, and the opinion expressed that it 
might be the Plesiosaurus. This brought out that great 
master in physiology. Professor Owen, who in a long, and, 
it is needless to say, most able letter to the Times, dated 
the 9th of November, 1848, set forth a series of weighty 
arguments against belief in the supposed serpent, which 
I regret that I am unable, from want of space, to quote 
in extenso. The reasoning of the most eminent of living 
physiologists of course had its influence on those who 
could best appreciate it ; but, as it went against the 
current of popular opinion, it met with little favour from 
the public, and has been slurred over much too super- 
ciliously by some subsequent writers. He suggested also 
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