324 
PROFESSOR OWEN 
CH. X. 
of the body, or else it was a vertical one, which is 
not characteristic of serpents, and further, that no 
remains had ever been discovered washed up on 
any coast. Me adds : ‘ Now, a serpent being an 
air-breathing animal, dives with an effort, and 
commonly floats when dead, and so would the 
sea-serpent, until decomposition or accident had 
opened the tough integument and let out the 
imprisoned gases. . . . During life the exigencies 
of the respiration of the great sea-serpent would 
always compel him frequently to the surface, and 
when dead and swollen it would 
Prone on the flood, extended long and large. 
Lie floating many a rood. 
Such a spectacle, demonstrative of the species if 
it existed, has not hitherto met the gaze of any of 
the countless voyagers who have traversed the 
seas in so many directions.’ 
On November 9 Owen sent a letter to the 
‘ Times ’ in explanation of an account of the great 
sea-serpent, saying that he was anxious through 
that paper to give his opinion once for all, as he 
continued to receive many applications for it. 
Early in 1849 we find him acknowledging the 
receipt of a communication made to him from the 
Prince Consort through Sir Charles Phipps on the 
same subject. In this letter he states his opinion 
that the ‘ animal ’ seen from the deck of the 
‘ Daedalus’ was the head and track of a great seal 
