Part 43
Mr. NEWMAN, the Editor of the _Zoologist_, too, could not forego the pleasure to publish a second time his favourite explanation of the _Enaliosaurians_. In the Preface to the year 1848 of his Journal, which appeared together with Mr. COGSWELL’S above mentioned dissertation, he filled some pages about the subject:
“The communications made to the Admiralty by Captain M’Quhae has turned public attention to the possibility of the existence of a _Sea-Serpent_ (Zool. 2307). My own views on this subject have long been known: two years have elapsed since I expressed an opinion (Zool. 1604), that although the evidence then before the public was perhaps insufficient to convince those who had hypotheses on their own to support, yet that it was far too strong for the fact-naturalist, the inquirer after truth, to dismiss without investigation. To advance such an opinion as this,--to admit the possibility of the existence of a sea-serpent in so enlightened an age as the nineteenth century,--of course led to my being loaded with ridicule; loaded, but not overwhelmed, for I immediately afterwards ventured on expressing a still bolder opinion,--no less than that of suggesting its affinity to a tribe of animals supposed to be extinct. I stated on the wrapper of n^o. 54 that the Enaliosauri of authors would, if living, present the appearances described. Almost immediately after this I published the statement of Captain Sullivan and five other British officers, who deliberately assert (Zool. 1715) that they saw--while on a fishing excursion on the coast of British America--a sea-serpent, which they supposed to be eighty or a hundred feet in length; its head, six feet in length, and its neck, also six feet in length, were the only part constantly above water, and resembled those of a common snake: the creature passed them with great rapidity, “leaving a regular wake”. Nothing is said of any undulating movement, or of any appearance of portions or coils of the body. The statement of Captain M’Quhae (Zool. 2307), and that obligingly furnished expressly for the “Zoologist” by Lieut. Drummond (Zool. 2306), essentially corroborate the evidence of Captain Sullivan and his companions: the length and position of the head and neck, and their being kept constantly above water, closely correspond; the estimated total length corresponds; the non-observance of any undulation corresponds,--indeed Captain M’Quhae expressly states that no portion of the animal appeared to be used in “propelling it through the water, either by vertical or horizontal undulation”. Thus we have separate statements closely corresponding with each other, and each statement is vouched for by several British officers whose veracity has never been called in question: under these circumstances we may afford to dismiss from this inquiry all those assertions of American captains, which have been treated in this country with such contempt. Resting the evidence solely on the authority of British officers, I then wish to state my unhesitating conviction that a marine animal of enormous size does exist, and that it differs essentially from any living animal described in our systematic works; and here I cannot refrain from expressing my regret that the statement of captain Sullivan should have been so entirely neglected as it has been: it appears to me in all respects equally trustworthy with the official statement of captain M’Quhae.”
“The next question which occurs is this--to what class of vertebrate animals must we refer this monster of the deep? Is it a mammal, bird, reptile, or fish? All these classes include animals whose home is the ocean. To commence with placental mammals;--we have otters, seals, walrusses and sea-cows, all of which breathe atmospheric air, and, therefore, when swimming on the surface usually keep their nostrils--often their heads--above the water: they also propel themselves by means of submerged fins or paddles, and, when inclined, can move along the surface with rapid direct and continuous motion. Professor Owen (Zool. 2312), in accordance with these views, declares the animal to be a seal; Phoca proboscidea or P. leonina, but his reasoning on the point appears to me very inconclusive: he assigns the animal a “capacious vaulted cranium”, whereas Lieutenant Drummond (Zool. 2307) declares the head was “long, pointed, and _flattened_ at the top”, adding that it was, “perhaps ten feet in length, the upper jaw projecting considerably.” Captain M’Quhae, also, subsequently to Professor Owen’s paper, repeats (Zool. 2333) that “the head was _flat_, and not a _capacious vaulted cranium_”. The captain, who must be annoyed at the insinuation that in an official report he had magnified a seal into a sea-serpent, emphatically declares that “its great length and its totally differing physiognomy preclude the possibility of its being a Phoca of any species.” This idea must therefore be abandoned; the other marine mammals still remaining open for future consideration.”
“Among Birds we have no approach to the animal described.”
“The Enaliosauri next claim our attention, and, for the present purpose, I could wish to separate them from the Reptiles, because I feel doubtful of their Reptilian nature. For this doubt I could urge many reasons in connection with the views I have long since published in the System of Nature, but, waiving all considerations which may be considered speculative, I would invite the intention of naturalists to the figure of Ichthyosaurus as restored by geologists, to the shape of the beak, the situation of the blow-holes, the character of the paddles, the mammalian structure exhibited by a section of the vertebrae, the extraordinary conformation of the sternum, and the smoothness of the skin; and when they have well-considered these important points, I would inquire whether these distinguishing features are not rather mammalian than reptilian? and, again, whether they are not rather marsupial than placental? I have already pointed out the manupedine, ferine, glirine and brutine groups of marsupials; why should we not also have a cetine group? Without making any other use of this suggestion than that of temporarily separating the Enaliosaurians from the Reptiles, I now request the readers’ attention to the arguments of Mr. Morries Stirling (Zool. 2309) and of F. G. S. (Zool. 2311), both of whom support the opinion which I had previously broached as to the Enaliosaurian character of the Sea Serpent,--a view controverted by Dr. Melville (Zool. 2310) and Prof. Owen (Zool. 2316), on the ground that the Enaliosaurians are extinct; but here I may perhaps be permitted to remark that this fact, being only assumed, does not touch the main question.”
“Proceeding to Reptiles proper, and referring to the suggestion of an anonymous contributor to the “Times”, quoted by Dr. COGSWELL (Zool. 2321 note), we find it questioned whether the animal may not have been a boa; and I may observe that the evidence concerning the head, which has been repeatedly described as precisely resembling that of a snake or serpent, together with the fact of the animal holding its head clear of the water, are so many points in favour of its belonging to the Ophidia; but, on the other hand, we must place the non-observance of that undulating mode of progression which every snake must employ,--and it amounts to more than non-observance, for Captain M’Quhae, who directed his attention to this point especially, declares that such undulation did not exist. Again, the enormous length--three times that of a boa--militates against this hypothesis. Professor Owen lays great stress on the non-existence of ophidian vertebrae; but as only two Ophidians have yet entered the arena as competitor for the title of sea-serpent,--Saccopharynx flagellum, which I have heard is a _bona fide_ black snake, and Boa constrictor, which is received on all kinds as a veritable serpent,--I think the absence of ophidian vertebrae is of no great moment. The Sauria offer similar coincidences with the Ophidia, and present a similar discrepancy: their heads and necks might readily be described by general observers as those of snakes or serpents, but the undulating motion with which they swim is almost precisely similar to that of snakes, and holds equally good as an objection to our marine monster entering their ranks. The Crocodilia and Chelonia have next to be considered, and these truly possess the submerged limbs requisite for propulsing in a direct course along the surface of the water; moreover, natatorial undulation of the vertebral column in crocodiles is highly improbable, in turtles absolutely impossible; hence: as far as aquatic progression is concerned, these reptiles agree more aptly than any other known living animal with the recently-published descriptions of so-called sea-serpents. Yet the comparatively compact form of both crocodiles and turtles, and especially the orbicular figure of the latter quite preclude the idea of their being described--even by the veriest tyro in observation--as snakes of a hundred feet in length; again in both crocodiles and tortoises floating on the surface of water, the back, and not the head and neck, must be the part most prominently and permanently visible. It is therefore manifest that no existing groups of reptiles answers the conditions required by the recently-recorded descriptions of the sea-serpent.”
“Finally, among fishes, the mind turns very willingly to the sharks as offering a solution of the problem; and the record respecting the sea-serpent of Stronsa (Zool. 2320) has given great weight to this view, adopted as it has been by such eminent naturalists as Drs. Mantell and Melville (Zool. 2310). With regard to the Stronsa animal, I entertain very great doubts of the decision in question; it certainly does not seem to have possessed the vertebrae of an ophidian, but then no naturalist desires to make it one; the boa hypothesis is applied only to the sea-serpent of the _Daedalus_. Leaving, however, this Orcadian monster to its own merits, I may observe, _first_, that all analogy contravenes the idea of a shark having a neck, and _secondly_, I would beg of those gentlemen who advocate this hypothesis, to take their pencils and depict a shark with a head and shoulders clear out of the water, and his body hanging almost perpendicularly below. I think the most brilliant fancy could scarcely imagine a shark maintaining such a position for twenty minutes at the time, and, what is stranger still, while in this position, ploughing the ocean at the rate of twenty miles an hour.”
“After maturely considering these various views, it will be found that the Enaliosaurian hypothesis presents the fewest difficulties,--in fine, one only, the supposition that these wonderful creatures have become extinct. It will be the object of a separate essay, now preparing for the press, to adduce evidence from other sources of the existence--in sea-serpents seen off the Norwegian coast--of two large flappers or paddles, closely corresponding in situation with the anterior paddles of Ichthyosaurus, and also of enormous eyes, exactly as indicated by the fossil remains of that animal; but this, not being deducible from recent observations, may be reserved for a more complete and careful review of the entire history of these enormous creatures which in all probability will eventually be found to constitute several genera and species.”
“In throwing open the pages of the “Zoologist” to communication on a subject so uniformly tabooed by the scientific,--in claiming for that subject a calm and dispassionate investigation,--in expressing my unhesitating belief that the various narratives, although often conflicting, are nevertheless, according to the belief of the narrator, perfectly true,--and in attempting to assign the sea-serpent a place in the System of Nature,--I feel convinced that all true naturalists will approve the course I have taken, and will be willing to abide the result. Discussion must ever have the tendency to dissipate error and establish truth; and he who believes himself right need never shun the ordeal. In this spirit I invite discussion, and shall feel obliged for any communications tending to elicit or establish truth.”
Here again I am obliged to make some remarks.
The communications made by Captain M’QUHAE and Lieutenant DRUMMOND are inserted in the foregoing Chapter (n^o. 118).--The statement of Captain SULLIVAN and five other British officers is that of 1833, May 15th., inserted above. (n^o. 97.)
Ever and anon Mr. NEWMAN shows that the statements referred to by him are those of _British_ officers. Why so? Is a British officer more trustworthy than an officer of any other nation?
What zoologist or palaeontologist has ever shared Mr. NEWMAN’S doubt of the reptilian nature of the Enaliosaurians!? Who would like to bring these extinct creatures under a newly founded order of Cetacean Marsupials!! Did not Mr. NEWMAN’S suggestion originate in the two facts 1. That he himself thought the sea-serpent to be an Enaliosaurian, and 2. That Prof. OWEN asserted that the sea-serpent of Captain M’QUHAE, according to his description and figures, must be a mammal? I think Mr. NEWMAN reasoned further: “well, why should the Enaliosaurians not be mammals?”
“The enormous length of the animal, three times that of a boa, militates against this hypothesis”, viz. of being a boa. This is no argument. In the time that only calamaries were known of 6 or 7 feet length, with arms of 10 or 11 feet, nobody had ever dreamt that there existed really individuals of 30 feet in length with long arms of 50 feet!
It is evident that Mr. NEWMAN was wrongly informed about the _Saccopharynx flagellum_, for this animal is a kind of _fish_, belonging to the eel-tribe, however not in the least resembling an eel in its external characters, and not a black _snake_!
The “separate essay, now preparing for the press” as far as I know has never been published.
The quotation of the _Ichthyosaurus_ shows us that Mr. NEWMAN was unwilling to give up his first suggestion. The evidence, referred to by him, where the sea-serpent had apparently two flappers near the head, is the same as that referred to by Dr. COGSWELL, (see pp. 409, 411, and n^o. 115.).
After observing that other sea-serpents, e. g. that of Captain M’QUHAE don’t come up to his Ichthyosaurian suggestion, Mr. NEWMAN concludes that “the enormous creatures in all probability will eventually be found to constitute several genera and species!!!
The favourite Plesiosaurian hypothesis is also spoken of by the writer of the “_Reply to Mr. Newman’s Inquiries respecting the bones of the Stronsa Animal_” (which I have inserted in my Chapter on Would-be sea-serpents). He says:
“But we must now conclude with the single remark, that if the Stronsa Animal was not a shark, it was certainly not the great sea-serpent, which, if it does exist, will most likely be allied to the Plesiosauri of by-gone days, and to which the animal seen by the Rev. Mr. Maclean, Eigg Island (Wern. Mem. I. p. 442), seems to have borne a strong resemblance.” JAS. C. HOWDEN.
As to the animal of Mr. MACLEAN, see our n^o. 31.
Mr. NEWMAN in the Preface to the _Zoologist_ for 1849, wrote the following about the Reptiles mentioned in this volume. The words are worth quoting.
“In British _Reptiles_ nothing remarkable has occurred; but I have been favoured with a communication, published in the February number (Zool. 2356), announcing the present existence of huge marine animals closely related to the Enaliosauri of by-gone ages, that appears to me in all respects the most interesting Natural History-fact of the present century, completely overturning as it does some of the most favourite and fashionable hypotheses of geological science. The published opinion of Mr. Agassiz (Zool. 2395) certainly favours the idea that Enaliosaurians may still exist: he says: it would be in precise conformity with analogy that an animal should exist in the American seas which has long been extinct and fossilized in the Eastern hemisphere: he instances the gar-pike of the western rivers, and says that, in a recent visit to Lake Superior, he has detected several fishes belonging to genera now extinct in Europe.”
The communication mentioned here is that of Captain HOPE, who saw the sea-serpent in the Gulf of California (n^o. 119). In fact, since this opinion was expressed by AGASSIZ, (where?) numerous animals, even of tolerably large size, have been discovered in Australia as well as in the great depth of the ocean, the allies of which are only found in a fossilized state.
The favourite _Plesiosaurus_ hypothesis is also treated of and finally adopted by Mr. GOSSE, in his _Romance of Natural History_. After rejecting the hypotheses of the sea-serpent being only a deceitful huge stem of sea-weed, or a large seal, a cetacean, a basking shark, a large ribbon-fish, some large kind of the eel tribe, a large specimen of true sea-snakes, a strayed large land-snake as the boas, he goes on in the following manner:
“It yet remains to consider the hypothesis advanced by Mr. E. Newman, Mr. Morries Stirling, and “F. G. S.”, that the so called sea-serpent will find its closest affinities with those extraordinary animals, the _Enaliosauria_, or Marine Lizards, whose fossil skeletons are found so abundantly scattered through the oolite and the lias. The figure of _Plesiosaurus_, as restored in Professor Ansted’s _Ancient World_, has a cranium not less capacious or vaulted than that given in Captain M’Quhae’s figures; to which, indeed, but that the muzzle in the latter is more abbreviate, it bears a close resemblance. The head was fixed at the extremity of a neck composed of thirty to forty vertebrae, which, from its extraordinary length, slenderness, and flexibility, must have been the very counterpart of the body of a serpent. This snake-like neck merged insensibly into a compact and moderately slender body, which carried two pairs of paddles, very much like those of a sea-turtle, and terminated behind in a gradually attenuated tail”.
“Thus, if the _Plesiosaur_ could have been seen alive, you would have discerned nearly its total length at the surface of the water, propelled at a rapid rate, without any undulation, by an apparatus altogether invisible,--the powerful paddles beneath; while the entire serpentine neck would probably be projected obliquely, carrying the reptilian head, with an eye of moderate aperture, and a mouth whose gape did not extend beyond the eye. Add to this a covering of the body not formed of scales, bony plates, or other form of solidified integument, but a yielding, leathery skin, probably black and smooth, like that of a whale; give the creature a length of some sixty feet or more, and you would have before you almost the very counterpart of the apparition that wrought such amazement on board the _Daedalus_. The position of the nostrils at the summit of the head indicates that on first coming on the surface from the depths of the sea, the animal would spout in the manner of the whales,--a circumstance reported by some observers of the sea-serpent.”
“I must confess that I am myself far more disposed to acquiesce in this hypothesis than in any other that has been mooted. Not that I would identify the animal seen with the actual _Plesiosaurs_ of the lias. None of them yet discovered appear to exceed thirty-five feet in length, which is scarcely half sufficient to meet the exigencies of the case. I should not look for any species, scarcely even any genus, to be perpetuated from the oolitic period to the present. Admitting the actual continuation of the order _Enaliosauria_, it would be, I think, quite in conformity with general analogy to find important generic modifications, probably combining some salient features of several extinct forms. Thus the little known _Pliosaur_ had many of the peculiarities of the _Plesiosaur_, without its extraordinarily elongated neck, while it vastly exceeded it in dimensions. What if the existing form should be essentially a _Plesiosaur_, with the colossal magnitude of a _Pliosaur_?”
“There seems to be no real structural difficulty in such a supposition except the “mane”, or waving appendage, which has so frequently been described by those who profess to have seen the modern animal. This, however, is a difficulty of ignorance, rather than of contradiction. We do not _know_ that the smooth integument of the _Enaliosaurs_ was destitute of any such appendage, and I do not think there is any insuperable unprobability in the case. The nearest analogy that I can suggest, however, is that of the _Chlamydosaur_, a large terrestrial lizard of Australia, whose lengthened neck is furnished with a very curious plaited frill of thin membrane, extending like wings or fins to a considerable distance from the animal.”
(_Foot-note:_) [“It was not till after this paragraph was written that I noticed the very close similarity of the fins with which Hans Egede has adorned his figure of the sea-serpent (copied in the Illustrated London News, Oct. 28, 1848), to the frill of the _Chlamydosaurus_.”]
“Two strong objections, however, stand in the way of our acceptance of the present existence of _Enaliosauria_; and these are forcibly presented by Professor Owen. They are,--1. The hypothetical improbability of such forms having been transmitted from the era of the secondary strata to the present time; and 2. The entire absence of any parts of the carcases or unfossilized skeletons of such animals in museums.”
“My ignorance of the details of palaeontology makes me feel very diffident in attempting to touch the former point, especially when so great an authority has pronounced an opinion; still I will modestly express one or two thoughts on it.”
“There does not seem any _à priori_ reason why early forms should not be perpetuated; and examples are by no means rare of animals much anterior, geologically, to the _Enaliosaurs_, being still extant. The very earliest forms of fishes are of the _Placoid_ type, and it is remarkable that not only is that type still living in considerable numbers, but the most gigantic examples of this class belong to it,--viz. the sharks and rays; and these exhibiting peculiarities which by no means remove them far from ancient types. The genus _Chimaera_ appears in the oolite, the wealden, and the chalk; disappears (or rather is not found) in any of the tertiary formations, but reappears, somewhat rarely, in the modern seas. It is represented by two species inhabiting respectively the Arctic and Antarctic Oceans.”
“Now, this is exactly a parallel case to what is conjectured of the _Enaliosaurs_. They appear in the oolite and the chalk, are not found in the tertiary strata, but reappear, rarely, in the modern seas, represented by two or more species inhabiting the Northern and Southern Oceans.”
“Among Reptiles, the curious family of river tortoises named _Trionychidae_, distinguished by their long neck, and a broad cartilaginous margin to the small back-shell, appears first in the wealden. No traces occur of it in any subsequent formation, till the present period, when we find it represented by the large and savage inhabitants of the Mississippi, the Nile, and the Ganges.”
“What is still more to the purpose is, that the _Iguanodon_, a vast saurian which was contemporary with the _Plesiosaur_ and _Ichthyosaur_, though transmitting no observed representative of its form through the tertiary era, is yet well represented by the existing _Iguanadae_ of the American tropics.”