CHAPTER XVI.

MONSTERS OF THE DEEP.(48)

Mark Twain on Whales—A New Version of an Old Story—Whale as Food—Whaling in 1670—The Great Mammal’s Enemy, the “Killer”—The Animal’s Home—The So‐called Fisheries—The Sperm Whale—Spermaceti—The Chase—The Capture—A Mythical Monster—The Great Sea‐Serpent—Yarns from Norway—An Archdeacon’s Testimony—Stories from America—From Greenland—Mahone Bay—A Tropical Sea‐Serpent—What is the Animal?—Seen on a Voyage to India—Off the Coast of Africa—Other Accounts—Professor Owen on the Subject—Other Theories.

Some years ago, when an invalid wrote to Mark Twain seeking advice as to the value of fish as “brain food,” the answer of that humourist was plain indeed:—“Fish‐food is good: abounds in phosphorus and nutrition. In your case I must recommend a small whale!” Unfortunately, Mark Twain fell into a very common error. The whale is _not_ a fish; it is a mammal: it suckles its young. The writer has eaten whale—that is, a little bit of one. Whale brain, enclosed in batter, and treated as a fritter, is not to be despised.

The British whaler of about 1670 is quaintly described by Frederic Martin, who visited Spitzbergen and Greenland that year. He says:—“Whoever of the ships’ crews sees a dead whale cries out, ‘Fish mine!’ and therefore the merchants must pay him a ducat for his care and vigilance. Many of them climb often into the mast in hopes to have a ducat, but in vain. When the dead whale is thus fastened to the ship, two sloops hold on the other side of the fish, or whale, and in each of them doth stand a man or boy that has a long hook in his hands, wherewith he doth hold the boat to the ship, and the harpooner stands before in the sloop or upon the whale, with a leathern suit on, and sometimes they have boots on. Underneath the hook are some sharp nails fixed, that they may be able to stand firm. These two men that cut the fat off have their peculiar wages for it, viz., about four or five rix dollars. First they cut a large piece from behind the head, by the eyes, which they call the _kenter‐piece_, that is as much as to say, the _winding‐piece_; for as they cut all the other fat all in rows from the whale towards the end, so they cut this great _kenter‐piece_ larger and wider than all the rest. This piece, when it is cut round about from the whale, reaches from the water to the cradle (that is, the round circle that goes round about the middle of the mast, and is made in the shape of a basket), whence you may guess of the bigness of a whale. A strong and thick rope is fixed to this kenter‐piece, and the other end is fixed to underneath the cradle, whereby the whale is as it were borne up out of the water, that they may come at it, and by reason of the great weight of the whale the ship leans towards that side. One may judge how tough the fat is, for in this piece a hole is made, through which the rope is fastened, yet not deep into the fat, wherewith they turn the fish at pleasure. Then they cut another piece down hard by this, which is also hauled up into the ship, where it is cut into pieces a foot square. The knives used are, with their hafts, about the length of a man,” and so on.

Mr. Brierly tells us that the most important natural enemy of the whale on the coast of Australia is the “killer,” a kind of large porpoise, with a blunt head and large teeth. These “killers” often attack the whale, and worry it like a pack of dogs, and sometimes kill it. The whalemen regard these creatures as important allies, for when they see from the look‐out that a whale has been “hove‐to” by them they are pretty sure of capturing it. The killers show no fear of the boats, but will attack the whale at the same time; and if a boat is stove in, which often happens, they will not hurt the men when in the water. The Australian natives about Twofold Bay say the killers are the spirits of their own people, and when they see them will pretend to point out particular individuals they have known. Some are very large, exceeding twenty‐five feet; they blow from the head, in the same manner as the whale.

The homes of whales are hardly known. Where the northern whale breeds has long been a puzzling question among whalemen. It is a cold‐water animal. Maury asks:—“Is the nursery for the great whale in the Polar Sea, which has been so set about and hemmed in with a ledge of ice that man may not trespass there? This providential economy still further prompts the question, Whence comes all the food for the young whales there? Do the teeming whalers of the Gulf Stream convey it there also, in channels so far in the depths of the sea that no enemy may waylay and spoil it in the long journey? It may generally be believed that the northern whale, which is now confined to the Polar Sea, descended annually into the temperate region of the Atlantic, as far as the Bay of Biscay, and that it was only the persecution of the whale‐fishers which compelled it to seek its frozen retreat. This opinion is now shown to be erroneous, and to have rested only on the confounding of two distinct species of whale. Like other whales, the northern is migratory, and changes its quarters according to the seasons; and the systematic registers of the Danish colonists of Greenland show that often the same individual appears at the same epoch in the same fiord. The females of the southern whale visit the coasts of the Cape in June to bring forth their young, and return to the high seas in August or September. It was supposed that the migration of the northern whale was for a similar purpose. This, however, is not now considered to be the case. Its movements are attributed to climatal changes alone, and especially to the transport of ice into Baffin’s Bay. It lives entirely in the midst of glaciers, and therefore is found in the south during winter and in the north during summer. The whale‐fishery has diminished its numbers, but not altered its mode of life. It is stated now that the whale believed to have visited the North Atlantic Ocean is a totally different species, a much more violent and dangerous animal than the northern whale, also smaller, and less rich in oil. The fishery for the latter ceased towards the end of the last century, but it is thought to be not wholly extinct. On September 17th, 1854, a whale, with its little one, appeared before St. Sebastian, in the Bay of Biscay; the mother escaped, but the young one was taken, and from a drawing of a skeleton of the latter MM. Eschricht and Rheinhardt, of Copenhagen, are convinced that it belonged to a species distinct from the Greenland whale; so that the name of ‘Mysticete’ has been applied to various whales.”

The sperm whale, says Maury, is a warm water animal; the _right_ whale delights in cold water. The log‐books of the American whalers show that the torrid zone is to the right whale as a sea of fire, through which it cannot pass; and that the right whale of the northern hemisphere and that of the southern are two different animals; and that the sperm whale has never been known to double the Cape of Good Hope—he doubles Cape Horn.

Mr. Beale has done more to elucidate the habits and form of this whale than any other writer. Its great peculiarity of form is the head, presenting a very thick, blunt extremity, about a third of the whole length of the animal. The head, viewed in front, has a broad, flattened surface, rounded and contracted above, considerably expanded on the sides, and gradually contracted below, resembling in some degree the cut‐water of a ship. On the right side of the nose is a cavity for secreting and containing an oily fluid, which after death concretes into the substance called spermaceti, of which in a large whale there is not unfrequently a ton. The mouth extends nearly the whole length of the head, and the throat is capacious enough to give passage to the body of a man, presenting a strong contrast to the contracted gullet of the Greenland whale. Immediately beneath the black skin of the sperm whale is the blubber, or fat, termed “the blanket,” of a light yellowish colour, producing when melted the sperm oil. A specimen taken in 1829 near Whitstable measured sixty‐two feet in length. The oil was worth £320, exclusive of the spermaceti.(49) Many years since the _Samuel Enderby_, whaler, returned from the south with a cargo of sperm oil worth £40,000.

This whale swallows quantities of small fishes, and has been known to eject from its stomach a fish as large as a moderate‐sized salmon. This species is gregarious; and the herds, called “schools,” are females and young males. Mr. Beale saw 500 or 600 in one school. With each female school are one to three large “bulls,” or “schoolmasters,” as they are termed by the whalers. The full‐grown males almost always go in search of food. A large whale will yield eighty, and sometimes one hundred, barrels of oil. Among the habits of the whale are “breaching,” or leaping clear out of the water and falling back on its side, so that the breach may be seen on a clear day from the mast‐head at six miles’ distance; in “going ahead” the whale attains ten or twelve miles an hour, which Mr. Beale believes to be its greatest velocity; “lob‐tailing” is lashing the water with its tail. The dangers and hairbreadth escapes in the capture are very numerous.

In 1839 there were discovered among rubbish in a tower of Durham Castle the bones of a sperm whale, which, from a letter of June 20th, 1661, in the Surtees Collection, is shown to have been cast ashore at that time, and _skeletonised_ in order to ornament this old tower. Clusius describes, in 1605, a sperm whale thrown ashore seven years before, near Scheveling, where Cuvier supposed its head to be still preserved, and there is an antiquity of the kind still shown there.

The whale chase is an exciting scene. Sometimes the whale places himself in a perpendicular position, with the head downwards, and rearing his tail on high, beats the water with awful violence. The sea foams, and vapours darken the air; the lashing is heard several miles off, like the roar of a distant tempest. Sometimes he makes an immense spring, and rears his whole body above the waves, to the admiration of the experienced whaler, but to the terror of those who see for the first time this astonishing spectacle. Other motions, equally expressive of his boundless strength, attract the attention of navigators at the distance of miles. The whole structure of the whale exhibits most admirable adaptation to his situations and the element in which he lives, in the toughness and thickness of his skin and disposition of the coating of blubber beneath, which serves the purpose—if we may be permitted to use so homely a simile—of an extra great‐coat to keep him warm, and prevent his warm red blood from being chilled by the icy seas. But provision is especially made to enable him to descend uninjured to very great depths. The orifices of the nostrils are closed by valves, wonderfully suited to keep out the water from the lungs, notwithstanding the pressure. In one species they are shaped like cones, which fit into the orifice like corks in the neck of a bottle, and the greater the pressure the tighter they hold. The most surprising fact in the whale, probably, is the power of descending to enormous depths below the surface of the sea, and sustaining that almost inconceivable pressure of the superincumbent water. On one occasion which fell under Mr. Scoresby’s own observation a whale was struck from a boat. The animal instantly descended, dragging down with him a rope nearly _one mile long_. Having let out this much of the rope, the situation of the boat’s crew became critical. Either they must have cut the line, and submitted to a very serious loss, or have run the risk of being dragged under water by the whale. The men were desired to retire to the stern, to counterbalance the pulls of the whale, which dragged the bow down sometimes to within an inch of the water. In this dangerous dilemma the boat remained some time, vibrating up and down with the tugs of the monster, but never moving from the place where it lay when the harpoon was first thrown. This fact proves that the whale must have descended at once perpendicularly, as had he advanced in any direction he must have pulled the boat along with him. Mr. Scoresby and the crew were rescued by the timely arrival of another boat furnished with fresh ropes and harpoons. A whale when struck will dive sometimes to a depth of 800 fathoms; and as the surface of a large animal may be estimated at 1,500 square feet, at this depth it will have to sustain a pressure equal to 211,000 tons. The transition from that which it is exposed to at the surface, and which may be taken at about 1,300 tons, to so enormous an increase, must be productive of the utmost exhaustion.

Strange incidents are related of harpooning. On September 24th, 1864, as the _Alexander_, belonging to Dundee, was steaming about in Davis’s Straits, a whale of about twelve tons was observed not far distant from her. Boats were put out, and the crew secured the animal. When they cleansed it, they found embedded in its body, two or three inches beneath the skin, a piece of a harpoon about eighteen inches long; on the one side were engraved the words—“_Traveller_,” _Peterhead_, and on the other, “1838.” This vessel was lost in 1856, in the Cumberland Straits whale‐ fishery; it is therefore clear that the harpoon must have remained in the animal from that time.

A sailor gives the following description of sleeping _inside_ a whale; not, however, quite as Jonah may have done. He says:(50)—“We were on a little expedition in the long‐boat one voyage, and we had to encamp for the night with as much comfort as our scant means would afford. The shore was terrible for its wildness and desolation—it was indeed lonely, sad, and sandy, but what was strange and welcome, was, great carcases of whales, stranded like wrecks on the far‐reaching shore, in some cases the backbone holding together like a good keel and the great ribs still round, giving you an idea of an elongated hogshead without the staves. We landed for the night, unbent our sails and stretched them over the bleached ribs of a whale’s skeleton, and after supper took a comfortable sleep under the most curious roof‐tree I ever rested under.” This was on the north‐west coast of Africa; and the sailor came to the conclusion that whales come ashore to die. “And to my mind,” says he, “it is as poetical as it is welcome. I like to think of these mighty travellers in the mighty deep hugging the shore when the fires of life burn low, and the mighty waves, their playmates from their childhood, giving their last lift up on the beach!”

And now for that great mythical or actual animal the sea‐serpent.

For ages an animal of immense size and serpentine form has been believed to inhabit the ocean, though rarely seen. A strong conviction of its existence has always prevailed in Norway and the fiords, where it has been reported to have been frequently seen. It is also said that the coasts of New England have been frequently visited by this marine monster many times during this century.

Bishop Pontoppidan, who, about the middle of the eighteenth century, wrote a history of Norway, his native land, collected a quantity of testimonies as to its occasional appearance. Among other evidence he mentions that of Captain de Ferry, of the Norwegian Navy, who saw the serpent, while in a boat rowed by eight men, near Molde, in August, 1774. A declaration of this was made by the captain and two of the crew before a magistrate. The animal was described as of the general form of a serpent stretched on the surface in receding coils or undulations, and the head, which resembled that of a horse, elevated some two feet out of the water.

In the summer of 1846 many respectable persons stated that in the vicinity of Christiansand and Molde they had seen the marine serpent. The affidavits of numerous persons were given in the papers, which, with some discrepancies in minute particulars, agree in testifying that an animal of great length (from about fifty to a hundred feet) had been seen at various times, in many cases more than once. All agreed that the eyes were large and glaring; that the body was dark‐brown and comparatively slender; and that the head, which for size was compared to a ten‐gallon cask, was covered with a long spreading mane.

An account of one of these encounters, which took place on the 28th May, 1845, was published by the Rev. P. W. Demboll, Archdeacon of Molde, those present being J. C. Lund, bookseller and printer, G. S. Krogh, merchant, Christian Flang, Lund’s apprentice, and John Elgenses, labourer. These men were fishing on the Romsdal Fjord, and the appearance took place about seven in the evening, a little distance from shore, near the ballast place and the Molde Hove. Lund fired at the animal, which followed them till they came to shallow water, when it dived and disappeared.

In 1817 the Linnæan Society of New England published “A Report relative to a Large Marine Animal, supposed to be a Serpent, seen near Cape Ann, Massachusetts, in August,” of that year. A good deal of care was taken to obtain evidence, and the deposition of eleven witnesses of fair and unblemished characters were certified on oath before the magistrates. The length was estimated at fifty to a hundred feet, and the head compared to that of a sea‐turtle, a rattlesnake, and a serpent generally, but in this case there was no appearance of a mane.

Again, in the _Boston Daily Advertiser_ for November 25th, 1840, there is a communication from the Hon. T. H. Perkins of that city, attesting his own personal observation of the marine serpent at Gloucester Harbour, near Cape Ann, in 1817. This communication took the form of a letter written to a friend in 1820.

Captain Perkins speaks of the animal’s motion being the vertical movement of the caterpillar, and not that of the common snake either on land or water, and this confirms the account of Mr. M‘Clean, the minister of a parish in the Hebrides, who saw in 1809 a serpentine monster about eighty feet in length. He distinctly states that it seemed to move by undulations up and down, which is not only contrary to all that is known of serpents, but from the structure of their vertebræ impossible. Hans Egede mentions the appearance of a marine snake off the coast of Greenland in 1734.

On the 15th of May, 1833, a party, consisting of Captain Sullivan, Lieutenant Maclachlan and Ensign Malcolm of the Rifle Brigade, Lieutenant Lyster of the Artillery, and Mr. Ince the ordnance store‐keeper at Halifax, started from that town in a small yacht for Mahone Bay, on a fishing excursion. When about half‐way they came upon a shoal of grampuses in an unusual state of excitement, and to the surprise of the party they perceived the head and neck of a snake, at least eighty feet in length, following them. An account of this occurrence was published in the _Zoologist_ for 1847. The editor stated that he was indebted for it to Mr. W. H. Ince, who received it from his brother, Commander J. M. R. Ince, R.N. It was written by one of the eye‐witnesses, Mr. Henry Ince, and signed as follows:—

W. Sullivan, Captain Rifle Brigade, June 21, 1831. A. Maclachlan, Lieut. „ „ August 5, 1824. G. P. Malcolm, Ensign „ „ August 13, 1830. B. O’Neal Lyster, Lieut. Artillery, June 7, 1816. Henry Ince, Storekeeper at Halifax.

The dates affixed to the names were those on which the gentlemen received their respective commissions.

Great interest was excited in 1848 by an account of a great sea‐serpent seen in lat. 24° 44’ S., and long. 9° 20’ E., in the tropics, and not very far from the coast of Africa, by the officers and crew of her Majesty’s frigate _Dædalus_. It was not, as in other cases, in bright and fine weather, but on a dark and cloudy afternoon, and with a long ocean swell. Captain Peter M‘Quhæ, in his report to the Admiralty, published in the _Times_ for the 13th of October, describes it with confidence as “an enormous serpent, with head and shoulders kept about four feet constantly above the surface of the sea;” and he adds: “As nearly as we could approximate by comparing it with the length of what our main topsail‐yard would show in the water, there was at the very least sixty feet of the animal _à fleur d’eau_, no portion of which was to our perception used in propelling it through the water, either by vertical or horizontal undulation. It passed rapidly, but so close under our lee‐quarter that had it been a man of my acquaintance I should have easily recognised his features with the naked eye; but it did not, either in approaching the ship or after it had passed our wake, deviate in the slightest degree from its course to the south‐west, which it held on at the pace of from twelve to fifteen miles per hour, apparently on some determined purpose. The diameter of the serpent was about fifteen or sixteen inches behind the head, which was without doubt that of a snake; and it was never during the twenty minutes that it continued in sight of our glasses once below the surface of the water; its colour a dark brown with yellowish white about the throat. It had no fins, but something like the mane of a horse, or rather a bunch of sea‐weed washed about its back.”

Drawings prepared from a sketch by Captain M‘Quhæ were published in the _Illustrated London News_ of 28th October, 1848. Lieutenant Drummond, the officer of the watch at the time, also printed his own impression of the animal, which differs in some slight points from the Captain’s account, particularly in ascribing a more elongated form to the head, in the mention of a back‐fin (whereas Captain M‘Quhæ expressly says no fins were seen), and the lower estimate of the length of the portion of the animal visible. Lieutenant Drummond’s words are:—“The appearance of its head, which with the back fin was the only portion of the animal visible, was long, pointed, and flattened at the top, perhaps ten feet in length; the upper jaw projecting considerably; the fin was perhaps twenty feet in the rear of the head, and visible occasionally. The Captain also asserted that he saw the tail, or another fin about the same distance behind it. The upper part of the head and shoulders appeared of a dark brown colour, and beneath the jaw a brownish white. It pursued a steady and undeviating course, keeping its head horizontal with the water, and in rather a raised position, disappearing occasionally beneath a wave for a very brief interval, and not apparently for the purposes of respiration. It was going at the rate of perhaps from twelve to fourteen miles an hour, and when nearest was perhaps 100 yards distant. In fact, it gave one quite the idea of a large snake or eel.” Lieutenant Drummond’s account is the more worthy of regard, as it was derived from his journal, and so gives the exact impressions of the hour, while Captain M‘Quhæ’s description was written from memory after his arrival in England.

These statements caused much discussion at the time. It was suggested by Mr. J. D. Morriss Stirling, a gentleman long living in Norway, and also by a writer in the _Times_ of November 2, 1848, under the signature of “F. G. S.,” that the monster had an affinity with the great fossil reptiles known to geologists as the _Enaliosauria_, and particularly adduced the genus _Plesiosaurus_, or gigantic lizard, with a serpent‐like neck. This is also the opinion of Professor Agassiz, as given in the report of his lectures in Philadelphia, in 1849, and reaffirmed in his “Geological Researches.”

A master in science, Professor Richard Owen, now appeared upon the field, and in a most able article in the _Times_, November 11, 1848, gave his verdict against the serpentine character of the animal, and pronounced it to have been, in his judgment, a seal. He argued this partly from the description of its appearance, and partly from the fact that no remains of any dead marine serpent had ever been found. He says: “On weighing the question whether creatures meriting the name of ‘great sea serpent’ do exist, or whether any of the gigantic marine saurians of the secondary deposits may have continued to live up to the present time, it seems to me less probable that no part of the carcase of such reptiles should have ever been discovered in a recent or unfossilised state, than that men should have been deceived by a cursory view of a partly submerged and rapidly moving animal, which might only be strange to themselves. In other words, I regard the negative evidence from the utter absence of any of the recent remains of great sea serpents, Krakens, or Enaliosauria, as stronger against their actual existence than the positive statements which have hitherto weighed with the public mind in favour of their existence. A larger body of evidence from eye‐witnesses might be got together in proof of ghosts than of the sea serpent.”

However, Captain M‘Quhæ gallantly returned to the charge, and combated the idea that he had mistaken one of the _Phoca_ species for a snake; and he was strongly corroborated by Mr. R. Davidson, Superintending Surgeon, Nagpore Subsidiary Force, in a letter from Kamptee, published in the _Bombay Bi‐monthly Times_, for January, 1849. This gentleman says that an animal, “of which no more generally correct description could be given than that by Captain M‘Quhæ,” passed within thirty‐five yards of the ship _Royal Saxon_ while he and its commander, Captain Petrie, were standing on the poop, when they were returning to India in 1829.

Again, a letter was printed in the _Zoologist_ for 1852, communicated by Captain Steele, 9th Lancers, to his brother, Lieutenant‐Colonel Steele of the Coldstream Guards, stating that while on his way to India in the _Bartram_ he and _every one on board_ saw “the head and neck of an enormous snake.” This was corroborated in a letter from one of the officers of the ship, who says:—“His head appeared to be about sixteen feet above the water, and he kept moving it up and down, sometimes showing his enormous neck, which was surmounted with a huge crest in the shape of a saw.”

Another theory was put forward in the London _Sun_ of the 9th July, 1849, by Captain Herriman, of the British ship _Brazilian_, who, on the 24th February, 1849, was becalmed on almost the same spot that Captain M‘Quhæ saw his monster while on a voyage from the Cape of Good Hope.

“I perceived,” wrote Captain Herriman, “something right abeam, about half a mile to the westward, stretched along the water to the length of about twenty‐five to thirty feet, and perceptibly moving from the ship with a steady sinuous motion. The head, which seemed to be lifted several feet above the water, had something resembling a mane running down to the floating portion, and within six feet of the tail it forked out into a sort of double fin.” On approaching in a small boat, however, Captain Herriman discovered that his monster was nothing more formidable than “an immense piece of sea‐weed, evidently detached from a coral reef, and drifting with the current, which sets constantly to the westward in this latitude, and which, together with the swell left by the subsidence of the gale, gave it the sinuous snake‐like motion.”

In the _Times_ of 5th February, 1858, a letter from Captain Harrington, of the ship _Castilian_, stating that he and his crew had seen a gigantic serpent on the 12th December, 1857, about ten miles N.E. of St. Helena, brought out another witness on the sea‐weed hypothesis. This was Captain Fred. Smith, of the ship _Pekin_, who gave a very similar account to that of Captain Herriman, stating that in lat. 26° S., long. 6° E., on the 28th December, 1848, he captured what he believed to be a serpent, but what turned out to be a gigantic piece of weed covered with snaky‐looking barnacles.

This last imputation brought up “An Officer of H.M. ship _Dædalus_,” whose testimony, in the _Times_ of 16th February, 1858, puts _hors de combat_ the sea‐weed theory in that renowned case. He states that, “at its nearest position, being not more than 200 yards from us, _the eye_, _the mouth_, the nostril, the colour and form, all being _most distinctly visible to us_ ... my impression was it was rather of a lizard than a serpentine character, as its movement was steady and uniform, _as if propelled by fins_, not by any undulatory power.”

That there is some mighty denizen of the vasty deep, sometimes but seldom seen, is more than possible, and highly probable; but to which of the recognised classes of created being can this huge rover of the ocean be referred? First of all, is it an animal at all? On two occasions monstrous pieces of weed have been mistaken for the Kraken, but on each occasion the distance from the vessel is estimated at half a mile; while Captain M‘Quhæ says that he was within 200 yards, and Mr. Davidson within thirty‐five yards of the animal. Under these circumstances we may fairly dismiss the sea‐weed hypothesis.

Professor Owen would place the sea‐serpent among the mammalia, but _Phoca proboscidea_ is the only seal which will bear comparison with the _Dædalus_ animal in dimensions, it reaching from twenty to thirty feet. The officers declare, however, that at least sixty feet of their animal was visible at the surface. Again, the fore paws of the seal are placed at about one‐third of the total length from the muzzle, and yet no appearance of fins was seen. To continue, the great _Phoca proboscidea_ has no mane, the only seals possessing what may be dignified with the title being the two kinds of sea lions—the _Otaria jubata_ and _Platyrhynchus leoninus_—which are far too small to come into the count.

It is quite possible that the great unknown is a reptile, and his marine habits present no difficulty. In the Indian and Pacific Oceans there are numerous specimens of true snakes (_Hydrophidæ_), which are exclusively inhabitants of the sea. None of these, however, are known to exceed a few feet in length, and none of them, so far as is known, have found their way into the Atlantic.

The most probable solution of the riddle is the hypothesis of Mr. Morriss Stirling and Professor Agassiz, 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 through the Oolite and the Lias. If the Plesiosaur could be seen alive you would find nearly its total length on the face 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 behind the eye. Add to this a body of leathery skin like that of the 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 _Dædalus_.

In evidence of the existence of such an animal, Captain the Hon. George Hope states that when in H.M.S. _Fly_, in the Gulf of California, the sea being perfectly smooth and clear, he saw at the bottom a large marine animal with the head and general figure of an alligator, except that the neck was much longer, and that, instead of legs, the animal had four large flappers, something like those of turtles.

The two strong objections to this theory are—first, the hypothetical improbability of such forms having been transmitted from the era of the secondary strata to the present time; and, second, the entire absence of any parts of the carcases or unfossilised skeletons of such animals in museums. Many fossil types, however, of marine animals have been transmitted, with or without interruption, from remote geological epochs to the present time; among these may be mentioned the Port Jackson Shark (_Cestracion_), and the gar‐pike (_Lepidosteus_), which have come down to us without interruption, the _Chimæra percopsis_ of Lake Superior, and soft‐shelled tortoises (_Trionychidæ_), with more or less apparent disappearance. The non‐occurrence of dead animals is of little weight as disproving the existence of the sea‐serpent; its carcase would float only a short time, and the rock‐bound coasts of Norway would be very unlikely to retain any fragment cast up by the waves; many whales being known to naturalists only from two or three specimens in many centuries.

The conclusion of the best naturalists is that the existence of the sea‐ serpent is possibly a verity, and that it may prove to be some modified type of the secondary _Enaliosaurians_, or possibly some intermediate form between them and the elongated _Cetaceans_.