96 
SEA MONSTERS UNMASKED. 
size a boat, or pull a man out of one, was derided for his 
credulity, although voyagers had constantly reported that 
in the Indian seas they were so dreaded that the natives 
always carried hatchets with them in their canoes, with 
which to cut off the arms or tentacles of these creatures, if 
attacked by them. We now know that their existence is 
no fiction ; for individuals have been captured measuring 
more than fifty feet, and some are reported to have 
measured eighty feet, in total length. As marine snakes 
some feet in length, and having fin-like tails adapted for 
swimming, abound over an extensive geographical range, 
and are frequently met with far at sea, I cannot regard it 
as impossible that some of these also may attain to an 
abnormal and colossal development. Dr. Andrew Wilson, 
who has given much attention to this subject, is of the 
opinion that " in this huge development of ordinary forms 
we discover the true and natural law of the production of 
the giant serpent of the sea.'* It goes far, at any rate, 
towards accounting for its supposed appearance. I am 
convinced that, whilst naturalists have been searchingamongst 
the vertebrata for a solution of the problem, the great un- 
known, and therefore unrecognized, calamaries by their elon- 
gated, cylindrical bodies and peculiar mode of swimming, have 
played the part of the sea-serpent in many a well-authenti- 
cated incident. In other cases, such as some of those men- 
tioned by Pontoppidan, the supposed " vertical undulations " 
of the snake seen out of water have been the burly bodies 
of so many porpoises swimming in line — the connecting 
undulations beneath the surface have been supplied by the 
imagination. The dorsal fins of basking sharks, as figured 
by Mr. Buckland, or of ribbon-fishes, as suggested by Dr. 
Andrew Wilson, may have furnished the " ridge of fins 
an enormous conger is not an impossibility ; a giant turtle 
