THE GREA T SEA SERPENT. 
97 
may have done duty, with its propelHng flippers and broad 
back ; or a marine snake of enormous size may, really, have 
been seen. But if we accept as accurate the observations 
recorded (which I certainly do not in all cases, for they are 
full of errors and mistakes), the difficulty is not entirely met, 
even by this last admission, for the instances are very few 
in which an ophidian proper — a true serpent — is indicated. 
There has seemed to be wanting an animal having a long 
snake-like neck, a small head and a slender body, and pro- 
pelling itself by paddles.* 
The similarity of such an animal to the PlesiosaiLViLS of 
old was remarkable. That curious compound reptile, which 
has been compared with " a snake threaded through the 
body of a turtle," is described by Dean Buckland, in his 
Bi'idgeivater Treatise^ as having " the head of a lizard, the 
teeth of a crocodile, a neck of enormous length resembling 
the body of a serpent, the ribs of a chameleon, and the 
paddles of a whale." In the number of its cervical vertebrae 
{about thirty-three) it surpasses that of the longest-necked 
bird, the swan. 
The form and probable movements of this ancient saurian 
agree so markedly with some of the accounts given of the 
''great sea-serpent," that Mr. Edward Newman advanced 
the opinion that the closest affinities of the latter would be 
found to be with the Enaliosaiiria, or marine lizards, whose 
* It must be noted, however, that in almost every case, except that 
of the Osborne^ the paddles were supposed, not seeti, and were invented 
to account for an animal of great length progressing at the surface of 
the water at the rate of twelve to fifteen miles an hour without its being 
possible to perceive, upon the closest and most attentive inspection, 
any undulatory movement to which its rapid advance could be 
ascribed. As the great calamaries were unknown, their mode of swift 
retrograde motion, by means of an outflowing current of water, was 
of course unsuspected. 
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