instances of the visibility of the sea serpent have been invariably after a 
series of warm, calm, and bright weather ; and this uniformity of cir¬ 
cumstance (of which more might be said), unsuggested apparently by 
previous accounts, is one of the strongest testimonies we have to the 
general good faith in which the different statements have been given. 
Reviewing all the evidence we have been able to collect for a short 
memoir on this curious subject, there certainly appears sufficient to justify 
the belief that one or more large marine animals do exist, whose habits 
rarely bring them within the observation of mankind. If favourable 
opportunities hereafter should ever allow of a satisfactory solution of the 
question, it is probable the creature known popularly at present as the 
sea serpent will be found to belong either to the cetacea or to the carti¬ 
laginous order of true fishes; though as has been hinted at in the fore¬ 
going pages it may turn out to be a saurian, or the representative of 
altogether a new genus to be interposed, as the extinct saurians are by 
some, between the cartilaginous fishes and the water serpents. Reason¬ 
ing from what we at present know of these orders, there are great diffi¬ 
culties in the way of any of the foregoing conclusions, except perhaps in 
the single case of the small serpent found near Boston, (see page 37) which, 
if a connection could have been actually established between it and the 
pelagic monster seen off the coast just before, would undoubtedly have been 
entitled to admission both for itself and its gigantic parent into the order 
of hydrophidiae, though even then the want of the flattened and paddle-like 
tail would have presented a remarkable aberration from the form of the 
known members of this family. Perhaps the conclusion we might come 
to, which would best evade the difficulties that beset us, is the probability 
of the existence of at least two unclassed marine animals, the one decid¬ 
edly ophidian in its characteristics—a true water-snake of huge dimen¬ 
sions, such as appears to have been seen off Gloucester harbour, U. S., in 
August, 1817, and that detailed to Professor Silliman in 1835, whose 
probable size did not exceed fifty or sixty feet in length. To this class 
the Norwegian appearances also generally conform, though after making 
due allowance for exaggeration, they certainly betoken a larger variety. 
The other animal, more apocryphal as a sea serpent, may find a re¬ 
presentative, until a better be produced, in the Stronsa derelict. 
But during these researches we have also noted traces, indefinite 
and mysterious though they be, of other existences of very different nature, 
and which suggest the probability of there being a distinct animal and 
vegetable kingdom existing in the deep abysses of ocean, indications 
of whose inhabitants are indeed offered to our momentary observation in 
