THE GREA T SEA SERPENT. 
99 
neck, or back, resembling a crest or mane. (Considerable 
discrepancy in details.) 6th. Colour dark brown, or green, 
streaked or spotted with white. 7th. Swims at surface of 
the water with a rapid or slow movement, the head and 
neck projected and elevated above the surface. 8th. 
Progression, steady and uniform ; the body straight, but 
capable of being thrown into convolutions. 9th. Spouts 
in the manner of a whale. loth. Like a long nun-buoy." 
He concludes with the question — " To which of the re- 
cognized classes of created beings can this huge rover of 
the ocean be referred " 
I reply : " To the Cephalopoda. There is not one of 
the above judiciously summarized characteristics that is 
not supplied by the great calamary, and its ascertained 
habits and peculiar mode of locomotion. 
Only a geologist can fully appreciate how enormously the 
balance of probability is contrary to the supposition that 
any of the gigantic marine saurians of the secondary 
deposits should have continued to live up to the present time. 
And yet I am bound to say, that this does not amount 
to an impossibility, for the evidence against it is entirely 
negative. Nor is the conjecture that there may be in 
existence some congeners of these great reptiles inconsistent 
with zoological science. Dr. J. E. Gray, late of the British 
Museum, a strict zoologist, is cited by Mr. Gosse as having 
long ago expressed his opinion that some undescribed form 
exists which is intermediate between the tortoises and the 
serpents.* 
* Dr. Gray wrote in his ' Synopsis of Genera of Reptiles,' in the 
Annals of Philosophy, 1825 : "There is every reason to believe from 
general structure that there exists an affinity between the tortoises and 
the snakes ; but the genus that exactly unites them is at present 
unknown to European naturalists ; which is not astonishing when we 
consider the immense number of undescribed animals which are daily 
