had come within our notice, as, for instance, the fish discovered by Sir 
John Herschell, at the Cape of Good Hope, eleven feet in length, and 
named Tetrapturus Herschelii ; and again, that singular and suggestive 
creature, half fish, half reptile, the Lepidosiren Paradoxica,* frequenting 
the coast of Brazil, near the river Amazons—-with how much greater 
confidence may we not believe that, in the deeper and more inaccessible 
localities of ocean, there exist races which must be nearly or altogether 
secluded from the observation of man. 
It has been remarked that every race of animals on the land has also 
its type or representative in the waters. From the fabulous merman, 
and the seal, popularly termed the sea ape, representing the quadrumana, 
through a long list of sea elephants, sea horses, sea cows, bears, lions, &c., 
all mammalia; sea foxes among the squali, sea eagles among the rays, to 
sea toads and sea devils, we arrive at the lower forms of life, and in the 
nereides and annelides, we find analogues to the caterpillars and worms 
of earth. Why should the serpents alone be wanting ? We have indeed 
hydri and ophidian forms; but no true ophidian, moving by undulatory 
motion alone, without the aid of fin or tail, has yet been found, f Yet if 
there be such—if a true serpent of the sea exist—it must live grovelling 
at the bottom, and participating in the doom of the race, « on thy belly 
shalt thou go, and dust slialt thou eat,” and visiting this upper world like 
the ghost in Hamlet, only on permitted occasions. 
Discontinuing, however, farther speculation of this kind, and returning 
soberly to our subject, it may be repeated, that there is very strong evi¬ 
dence for coming to the conclusion that there exist one or more large 
marine animals, seldom seen by man; and whose characters, so far ob¬ 
tained, are not sufficiently satisfactory to enable zoologists safely to assign 
them a place in their categories. The probabilities of the position of 
* Lepidosiren Paradoxica—appearance of an eel covered with large netted scales; 
body furnished with four simple and elongated tapering legs, front pair placed on the 
back edge of upper part of the spiracles, and the hinder pair on under side of hinder 
part of the body; three feet long, and pronounced on dissection to be a fish.— Iran** 
actions of Linncean Society. 
f The serpent taken two miles from the coast of India by the crew of the “Ben- 
coolen,” of Liverpool, a year or two ago, the skin of which is now in the possession 
of the owner of that ship, was undoubtedly a land boa. In testing the evidence bearing 
on the existence of a marine ophidian inhabiting the Atlantic, there is some value to 
be attached to the consideration, that off the coasts of India-a locality very favouraWe 
for the production of marvels, and where water-snakes do exist of a magnitude suffi¬ 
cient to be at least suggestive of Pontoppidan’s sea serpent—we are absolutely without 
any account of such appearances, either true or false. 
