52 
ANIMAL CURIOSITIES 
liar, with an imagination worthy of better 
things,” giving an account of one of these 
creatures which raised its head above water 
to such a great height as to overtop the masts 
of the ship he was in. 
Of later records that have been handed down 
of these monsters, we read that in 1848 a 
captain of a ship saw a gigantic sea-serpent 
of which over sixty feet of its length was 
visible to the eye; while in 1875 another 
individual appeared from the depths of the 
ocean and proceeded to encircle its body 
around a whale that happened to be in the 
vicinity, the victim being crushed to death 
in the serpent’s coils, and the breaking of its 
ribs producing loud cracking sounds. It is 
also recorded in The Animal World that in 
1877 the officers and crew of H.M. yacht 
Osborne forwarded a report to the Admiralty 
that on June 2 of that year they saw a huge 
serpent swimming in the water off the coast 
of Sicily. Its length was stated to be about 
150 feet, and its head was like that of an 
alligator. It measured twenty feet across 
the shoulders, and its back was surmounted 
by a row of fins. What was the real nature 
of the creature is difficult to say, and although 
it is not impossible to conceive that unknown 
forms of sea monsters may exist at the pre- 
