SECTION V. 
SEA SERPENT— Continued. 
Difficulties of the Question—Rarity of Appearance—Parallel Instances— 
Northern Chimera Stenoptyx—Riband Eish—Whale of Havre—Possible 
Causes of Rare Appearance—Parasitical Infesters—Electric and Volcanic 
Agents—Destruction of Haddocks—Eishes of Ancient Geological Forma¬ 
tions—General Conclusions as to the Sea Serpent—Other Probabilities— 
Submarine Animal Kingdom—Zoophytes—Surprising Eorms of Organic Life 
—Agassiz’s Remark—Conclusion. 
“Awful shape, what art thou? Speak! 
***** 
Descend, and follow me down the abyss.” 
Shelley. 
There remains an important point to be considered in treating of the 
probability of the existence of so large a marine animal as the sea serpent, 
even in its most reduced dimensions, must inevitably be, and this point is the 
rarity of its appearance. Whether allied to the saurians or to thehydri, 
whether it be a true cete, or even, as has been suggested, some overgrown 
individual of the conger tribe, which had attained a size far exceeding 
(like the pike of Heilbrun lake) the ordinary bulk of its species, the sur¬ 
prising rarity of its visits to the surface is still a stumbling-block in the 
way of any of these conclusions as to its identity. Yet this rarity of appear¬ 
ance is not without parallel in the annals of ichthyology. Passing by the 
shell-fish, asterias, medusae, and other mollusca, some species of which are 
known only by one or two specimens, and the British fauna of which is 
yearly added to by the indefatigable dredger of many years’ standing, around 
our coasts, there are several classes of fishes whose appearances are as rare 
as those of that nondescript which, for want of better knowledge, we term 
the sea serpent. The coasts of Norway furnish us with one instance in the 
Northern Chimsera, no bad type in other respects, of the sea serpent; “for,” 
says Swainson, “it is remarkable for the singularity of its appearance, which 
gives as much the idea of a reptile as of a fish. It grows three or four 
feet long, the head large and obtuse, but the body terminating gradually 
