298 
EXTINCT MONSTERS 
geologist, Dr. G. A. Mantell, appeared in The Illustrated London 
News of November 4, 1848 : — 
'' Sir, 
‘‘Will you allow me to correct a statement that appeared 
fossil mentioned at the conclusion of the admirable notice of 
the so-called sea-serpent, as having been exhibited in America 
under the name Hydrarchos Sillimani, was constructed by the 
exhibitor, Koch, from bones collected in various parts of Alabama, 
and which belonged to several individual skeletons of an extinct 
marine cetacean, termed Basilosaurus by the American naturalists, 
and better known in this country by that of Zeuglodon, a term 
signifying yoked teeth. Mr. Koch is the person who, a few years 
ago, had a fine collection of fossil bones of elephants and masto- 
dons, out of which he made up an enormous skeleton and exhibited 
it in the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, under the name Missourium. 
This collection was purchased by the trustees of the British 
Museum, and from it were selected the bones which now consti- 
tute the matchless skeleton of a mastodon in our National Gallery 
of organic remains [then in the British Museum]. Not content 
with the interest which the fossils he collected in various parts of 
the United States possess, Mr. Koch, with the view of exciting 
the curiosity of the ignorant multitude, strung together all the 
vertebrae he could obtain of Basilosaurus, and arranged them in a 
serpentine form, manufactured a skull and claws, and exhibited 
the monster as a fossil sea-serpent, under the above-mentioned 
name, Hydrarchos. But the trick was immediately exposed by 
the American naturalists, and the true nature of the fossil bones 
pointed out.^ 
1 After this, Koch’s sea-serpent was carried to Dresden. 
