1 885.] 
The Bolivian Monster. 
195 
exertions in continually accustoming itself to those sights 
which are racially (so to speak) strange, as yet not ingrafted 
as “ instindf ” ? (How much power over the health has 
the mind ?) 
The artist prefers a ship in sails to the more modern 
steamboat, — why ? Because his fathers have been familiar 
with the one for generations, and the other is “ new,” and 
still has to be imprinted on the brain of man so as to leave 
its effedt on his seed. 
III. THE BOLIVIAN MONSTER: TESTIMONY 
IN SCIENCE. 
B ROM time to time the naturalist is exercised by ru- 
mours, more or less definite, of the occurrence — or 
even the capture — of some novel or anomalous ani- 
mal. We do not here intend to speak of the sea-serpent, 
although 'against the positive evidence for its existence there 
can be set merely a fadt of doubtful value, — i.e., that no 
large snake-like vertebras have ever, as far as is known, been 
washed ashore or dredged up from the depths of the sea. 
Far less attention has been paid in the outside world to the 
reports of a gigantic subterranean creature, said to occur in 
Brazil, and occasionally to displace and uproot trees in its 
burrowings. 
Coming nearer our more immediate subject we may refer 
to an account which reached us some years ago of the cap- 
ture, in the interior of Queensland, of a powerful and 
dangerous Saurian quite distindt from the crocodiles and 
alligators of modern times, and approaching more closely to 
certain extindt reptile groups. This animal, we learned, 
had killed and devoured several “ black fellows,” and had at 
last been destroyed after a desperate struggle. The skeleton, 
we were informed, was on its way to London. Unfortunately 
it has never arrived. 
Now in all the cases just mentioned there is no antecedent 
improbability. The very name “ sea-serpent ” has become 
almost a synonym for a baseless falsehood. Yet since we 
