THE GREA T SEA SERPENT. 
Professor Agassiz, too, is adduced by a correspondent of 
the Zoologist 2395), as having said concerning the present 
existence of the Enaliosaurian type that " it would be in 
precise conformity with analogy that such an animal should 
exist in the American Seas, as he had found numerous 
instances in which the fossil forms of the Old World were 
represented by living types in the New." 
On this point, Mr. Newman records, in the Zoologist 
(p. 2356), an actual testimony which he considers, *'in all 
respects, the most interesting natural-history fact of the 
present century." He writes : 
" Captain the Hon. George Hope states that when in H.M.S. 
Fly/ in the Gulf of California, the sea being perfectly calm and 
transparent, he saw at the bottom a large marine animal with the 
head and general figure of the alligator, except that the neck was 
much longer, and that instead of legs the creature had four large 
flappers, somewhat like those of turtles, the anterior pair being 
larger than the posterior ; the creature was distinctly visible, and 
all its movements could be observed with ease ; it appeared to 
be pursuing its prey at the bottom of the sea ; its movements 
were somewhat serpentine, and an appearance of annulations, or 
ring-like divisions of the body, was distinctly perceptible. Captain 
Hope made this relation in company, and as a matter of conver- 
sation. When I heard it from the gentleman to whom it was nar- 
rated, I enquired whether Captain Hope was acquainted with 
those remarkable fossil animals Ichthyosauri and Flesiosauri, the 
supposed forms of which so nearly correspond with what he de- 
scribes as having seen alive, and I cannot find that he had heard 
of them ; the alligator being the only animal he mentioned as 
bearing a partial similarity to the creature in question." 
occurring. If I may be allowed to speculate from the peculiarities of 
structure which I have observed, I am inclined to think that the union 
will most probably take place by some newly discovered genera allied 
to the marine or fluviatile soft-skinned turtles and the marine serpent.'* 
