to have existed only in the brain of some Yankee For the same reason, we must pass over the skipper, and treated as a tale not much entitled to account of two remarkable animals seen in the belief. Dowling's exclamation is worthy of record. Western Islands of Scotland, and proceed to the "Well, I've sailed in all parts of the world, and

have seen rum sights too in my time, but this is the recent statements made by an officer in the naval queerest thing I ever see," and surely Jack Dowl-service of Great Britain.

ing was right. It is most difficult to give correctly The following very interesting report respecting the dimensions of any object in the water. The the appearance of the extraordinary animal seen by head of the creature we set down at about six feet some of the officers and crew of Her Majesty's ship in length, and that portion of the neck which we Dædalus, has been forwarded to the Admiralty by saw, at the same; the extreme length, as before Captain M'Quhæ :stated, at between eighty and one hundred feet. The neck in thickness equalled the bole of a moderate sized tree. The head and neck of a dark brown or nearly black color, streaked with white in irregular streaks. I do not recollect seeing any part of the body.

Her Majesty's ship Dædalus, Hamoaze, Oct. 11. Sir, In reply to your letter of this date, requiring information as to the truth of a statement published in the Times newspaper, of a sea-serpent of extraordinary dimensions having been seen from Her Majesty's ship Dædalus, under my command, on her passage from the East Indies, I have the honor to acquaint you, for the information of my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, that at five o'clock, p.m., on the 6th of August last, in latitude 24° 44′ S., and longitude 9° 22′ E., the weather dark and cloudy, wind fresh from the N. W., the ship on the port tack, heading N. E. by N., something very unusual was seen by Mr. Sartoris, midshipman, rapidly approaching the ship from before the beam. The circumstance was immediately re-reported by him to the officer of the watch, Lieutenant Edgar Drummond, with whom and Mr. William Barrett, the master, I was at the time walking the quarter-deck. The ship's company were at supper.

to those who prefer the excitement of the imaginaof the incident, and will be anything but acceptable tion to the satisfaction of the judgment. I am far from insensible to the pleasures of the discovery of a new and rare animal; but, before I can enjoy them, certain conditions-e. g., reasonable proof or evidence of its existence-must be fulfilled. I am also far from undervaluing the information which Captain M'Quhæ has given us of what he saw. When fairly analyzed, it lies in a small compass; but my knowledge of the animal kingdom compels me to draw other conclusions from the phenomena than those which the gallant captain seems to have

66

The

ing, as we do, the most implicit credit to Captain | ply to your query, "whether the monster seen M'Quha's statement, as a straightforward narrative from the Dedalus be anything but a Saurian?" of what he believed the truth, yet, as a contribution If it be the true answer, it destroys the romance to science, and especially that science which is preeminently one of facts, we must say that it scarcely equals in value that of Captain Sullivan, and is infinitely less important and satisfactory than the previous statements published in the "Zoologist," or the "Report of the Linnean Society of New England." One fact, however, is to be gleaned from Captain M'Quhæ, namely, that no undulation, vertical or horizontal, was observed, and no mention is made of the sinuosities, lumps, folds, or coils so often spoken of by other eye-witnesses. It was a matter of course that an official state-jumped at. He evidently saw a large animal movment, like that of Captain M'Quhæ, should call into action the pens of that scientific clique of which we have already been speaking, and who, to a man, were pledged to declare the sea-serpent a myth and an imposition. If such positive assertions were to pass unnoticed, the existence of a sea-serpent must meet with general credence, and the worth of their own scientific dicta must be called in question. At the meetings of the learned, the growing faith in a sea-serpent pressed hard on the exclusives. In the daily and weekly papers it was obviously gaining ground; the magnates were becoming small; their enunciations were being given to the wind. The time had now arrived for them to be up and doing. It is almost a pity that a special meeting of obstructives was not convened for the "putting down" of Captain M'Quhæ. The ridicule incident on the publication of such heterogeneous opinions emanating from the same body of high and mighty potentates in science might thus have been avoided; but now it will, we think, be apparent to the general reader that the object of the disputants is to throw discredit on Captain M'Quhæ's statements at all risks and as long as this desirable end is gained, the mode of attainment is quite a secondary consideration. The first fling at the captain was a letter in the Times, written to show that the Dedalus could not have been sailing on the larboard tack when in the position described; but an abler pen soon convinced the public that the writer himself was on the wrong tack, and that he exhibited ignorance rather than knowledge throughout his fluent and caustic epistle. The assailants being beaten off here, advanced a second explanation, that the captain's sea-serpent was a boa constrictor; then, with inconceivable rapidity it became a floating spar, an eel, a schull of porpoises, a bunch of seaweed, a lamprey and a shark. After the lesser stars had been twinkling in this way for ten days or a fortnight, Professor Owen took the field, and lo! the sea-serpent is converted into a seal :

Mons parturitur; nascitur ridiculus mus. The sketch [this was a reduced copy of the drawing of the head of the animal seen by Captain M'Quhe, attached to the submerged body of a large seal, showing the long eddy produced by the action of the terminal flippers] will suggest the re

ing rapidly through the water, very different from anything he had before witnessed-neither a whale, a grampus, a great shark, an alligator, nor any of the larger surface-swimming creatures which are fallen in with in ordinary voyages. He writes, "On our attention being called to the object, it was discovered to be an enormous serpent (readanimal') with the head and shoulders kept about four feet constantly above the surface of the sea. diameter of the serpent (animal) was about 15 or 16 inches behind the head; its color a dark brown, with yellowish white about the throat." No fins were seen, (the captain says there were none; but, from his own account, he did not see enough of the animal to prove his negative). Something like the mane of a horse, or rather a bunch of sea-weed washed about its back." So much of the body as was seen was "not used in propelling the animal through the water either by vertical or horizontal undulation." A calculation of its length was made beast. The head, e. g., is stated to be, without under a strong preconception of the nature of the any doubt, that of a snake; and yet a snake would be the last species to which a naturalist conversant with the forms and characters of the heads of animals would refer such a head as that of which Captain M'Quhe has transmitted a drawing to the admiralty; and which he certifies to have been accurately copied in the "Illustrated London News" for October 28, p. 265. Your lordship will observe, that no sooner was the captain's attention called to the object, "than it was discovered to be an enormous serpent;" and yet the closest inspection of as much of the body as was visible à fleur d'eau, failed to detect any undulations of the body, although such actions constitute the very character which would distinguish a serpent or serpentiform swimmer from any other marine species. The foregone conclusion, therefore, of the beast's being a sea-serpent, notwithstanding its capacious vaulted cranium and stiff inflexible trunk, must be kept in mind in estimating the value of the approximation made to the total length of the animal, as "at the very least sixty feet." This is the only part of the description, however, which seems to me to be so uncertain as to be inadmissible in an attempt to arrive at a right conclusion as to the nature of the

animal. The more certain characters of the animal are these:-Head, with a convex, moderately capacious cranium, short obtuse muzzle, gape of the mouth not extending further than to beneath the eye, which is rather small, round, filling closely the palpebral aperture; color, dark brown above, yellowish white beneath; surface smooth, without scales, scutes, or other conspicuous modifications of hard and naked cuticle. And the captain says,

edly from that vast and commonly blank desert of
waters, it would be a strange and exciting specta-
cle, and might well be interpreted as a marvel; but
the creative powers of the human mind appear to
be really very limited; and on all the occasions
where the true source of the "great unknown"
has been detected-whether it has proved to be a
file of sportive porpoises, or a pair of gigantic sharks
uniformly suggested itself as the representative of
the portent, until the mystery has been unravelled.
The vertebræ of the sea-serpent described and
delineated in the "Wernerian Transactions," vol.
i., and sworn to by the fishermen who saw it off
the Isle of Stronsa, (one of the Orkneys,) in 1808,
two of which vertebræ are in the Museum of the
College of Surgeons, are certainly those of a great
shark, of the genus Selache, and are not distin-
guishable from those of the species called "bask-
ing shark," of which individuals from 30 feet to 35
feet in length have been from time to time captured
or stranded on our coasts.

66

"Had it been a man of my acquaintance I should | Dædalus ever before beheld a gigantic seal freely have easily recognized his features with my naked swimming in the open ocean. Entering unexpect eye." Nostrils not mentioned, but indicated in the drawing by a crescentic mark at the end of the nose or muzzle. All these are the characters of the head of a warm-blooded mammal; none of them those of a cold-blooded reptile or fish. Body long, dark brown, not undulating, without dorsal or other apparent fins; "but something like the mane of a horse, or rather a bunch of sea-weed washed about its back." The character of the integuments would-old Pontoppidan's sea-serpent with the mane has be a most important one for the zoologist in the determination of the class to which the above-defined creature belonged. If any opinion can be deduced as to the integuments from the above indication, it is that the species had hair, which, if it was too short and close to be distinguished on the head, was visible where it usually is the longest, on the middle line of the shoulders or advanced part of the back, where it was not stiff and upright like the rays of a fin, but "washed about." Guided by the above interpretation of the "mane of a horse, or a bunch of sea-weed," the animal was not a cetaceous mammal, but rather a great seal. But what seal of large size, or indeed of any size, I have no unmeet confidence in the exactitude of would be encountered in latitude 24° 44′ south, and my interpretation of the phenomena witnessed by longitude 9° 22′ east-viz., about 300 miles from the captain and others of the Dædalus. I am too the western shore of the southern end of Africa? sensible of the inadequacy of the characters which The most likely species to be there met with are the opportunity of a rapidly passing animal, “in a the largest of the seal tribe, e. g., Anson's sea-long ocean swell," enabled them to note, for the lion, or that known to the southern whalers by the determination of its species, or genus. Giving due name of the "sea-elephant," the Phoca probos- credence to the most probably accurate elements of cidia, which attains the length of from 20 to 30 their description, they do little more than guide the feet. These great seals abound in certain of the zoologist to the class, which, in the present instance, islands of the southern and antarctic seas, from is not that of the serpent or the saurian. which an individual is occasionally floated off upon But I am usually asked, after each endeavor to an iceberg. The sea-lion exhibited in London last explain Captain M'Quha's sea-serpent, "Why spring, which was a young individual of the Phoca there should not be a great sea-serpent?"—often, proboscidia, was actually captured in that predica- too, in a tone which seems to imply, ment, having been carried by the currents that set think, then, there are not more marvels in the deep northwards towards the cape, where its temporary than are dreamt of in your philosophy?" And resting-place was rapidly melting away. When a freely conceding that point, I have felt bound to large individual of the Phoca proboscidia or Phoca give a reason for scepticism as well as faith. If leonina is thus borne off to a distance from its na-a gigantic sea-serpent actually exists, the species tive shore, it is compelled to return for rest to its must of course have been perpetuated through sucfloating abode after it has made its daily excursion cessive generations from its first creation and introin quest of the fishes or squids that constitute its duction into the seas of this planet. Conceive, food. It is thus brought by the iceberg into the then, the number of individuals that must have latitudes of the Cape, and perhaps further north, lived and died, and have left their remains to attest before the berg has melted away. Then the poor the actuality of the species during the enormous seal is compelled to swim as long as strength en- lapse of time from its beginning to the 6th of Audures; and in such a predicament I imagine the gust last! Now, a serpent, being an air-breathing creature was that Mr. Sartoris saw rapidly ap-animal, with long vesicular and receptacular lungs, proaching the Daedalus from before the beam, dives with an effort, and commonly floats when scanning, probably, its capabilities as a resting-dead; and so would the sea-serpent, until decomplace, as it paddled its long stiff body past the position or accident had opened the tough integuship. In so doing, it would raise a head of the ment and let out the imprisoned gases. Then it form and color described and delineated by Captain would sink, and, if in deep water, be seen no more M'Quhæ, supported on a neck also of the diameter until the sea rendered up its dead, after the lapse given; the thick neck passing into an inflexible of the cons requisite for the yielding of its place trunk, the longer and coarser hair on the upper to dry land-a change which has actually revealed part of which would give rise to the idea, especial- to the present generation the old saurian monsters ly if the species were the Phoca leonina, explained by the similes above cited. The organs of locomotion would be out of sight. The pectoral fins being set on very low down, as in my sketch, the chief impelling force would be the action of the deeper immersed terminal fins and tail, which would create a long eddy, readily mistakable by one looking at the strange phenomenon with a seaserpent in his mind's eye, for an indefinite prolongation of the body.

It is very probable that not one on board the

Do you

that were entombed at the bottom of the ocean of the secondary geological periods of our earth's history. During life the exigences of the respiration of the great sea-serpent would always compel him frequently to the surface; and when dead and swollen

Prone on the flood, extended long and large,

he would

Lie floating many a rood; in bulk as huge
As whom the fables name of monstrous size,
Titanian, or Earth-born, that warr'd on Jove.

Such a spectacle, demonstrative of the species if it existed, has not hitherto met the gaze of any of the countless voyagers who have traversed the seas in so many directions. Considering, too, the tides and currents of the ocean, it seems still more reasonable to suppose that the dead sea-serpent would be occasionally cast on shore. However, I do not ask for the entire carcass. The structure of the back-bone of the serpent tribe is so peculiar, that a single vertebra would suffice to determine the existence of the hypothetical Ophidian; and this will not be deemed an unreasonable request when it is remembered that the vertebræ are more numerous in serpents than in any other animals. Such large, blanched, and scattered bones on any sea-shore would be likely to attract even common curiosity; yet there is no vertebra of a serpent larger than the ordinary pythons and boas in any museum in Europe.

at Bracklesham, which belong to a large species of an extinct genus of serpent, (Palæophis,) founded on similar vertebræ from the same formation in the Isle of Sheppey. The largest of these ancient British snakes was 20 feet in length; but there is no evidence that they were marine.

The sea saurians of the secondary periods of geology have been replaced in the tertiary and actual seas by marine mammals. No remains of Cetacea have been found in lias or oolite, and no remains of Plesiosaur, or Ichthyosaur, or any other secondary reptile, have been found in Eocene or later tertiary deposits, or recent, on the actual seashores; and that the old air-breathing saurians floated when they died has been shown in the Geological Transactions," (vol. v., second series, p. 512.) The inference that may reasonably be drawn from no recent carcass, or fragment of such, having ever been discovered, is strengthened by the corresponding absence of any trace of their remains in the tertiary beds.

66

Few sea-coasts have been more sedulously searched, or by more acute naturalists, (witness the labors of Sars and Lovén,) than those of Nor- Now, on weighing the question, whether creaway. Krakens and sea-serpents ought to have tures meriting the name of "great sea-serpent" do been living and dying thereabouts from long before exist, or whether any of the gigantic marine sauriPontoppidan's time to our day, if all tales were ans of the secondary deposits may have continued true; yet have they never vouchsafed a single frag- to live up to the present time, it seems to me less ment of their skeleton to any Scandinavian collec-probable that no part of the carcass of such reptiles tor; whilst the other great denizens of those seas have been by no means so chary. No museums, in fact, are so rich in the skeletons, skulls, bones, and teeth of the numerous kinds of whales, cachalots, grampuses, walruses, sea-unicorns, seals, &c., as those of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden; but of any large marine nondescript, or indeterminable monster, they cannot show a trace.

should have ever been discovered in a recent or unfossilized 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

have hitherto weighed with the public mind in favor of their existence. A larger body of evidence from eye-witnesses, might be got together in proof of ghosts than of the sea-serpent. RICHARD OWEN, Lincoln's Inn Fields, November 9, 1848.-From

I have inquired repeatedly whether the natural-actual existence than the positive statements which history collections of Boston, Philadelphia, or other cities of the United States, might possess any unusually large ophidian vertebræ, or of any such peculiar form as to indicate some large and unknown marine animal; but they have received no such specimens.

The frequency with which the sea-serpent has been supposed to have appeared near the shores and harbors of the United States has led to its being specified as the "American sea-serpent;" yet out of the 200 vertebræ of every individual that should have lived and died in the Atlantic since the creation of the species, not one has yet been picked up on the shores of America. The diminutive snake, less than a yard in length, "killed upon the sea-shore," apparently beaten to death, "by some laboring people of Cape Ann," United States, (see the 8vo pamphlet, 1817, Boston, page 38,) and figured in the "Illustrated London News," October 28, 1848, from the original American memoir, by no means satisfies the conditions of the problem. Neither do the Saccopharynx of Mitchell, nor the Ophiognathus of Harwood-the one 4 feet and the other 6 feet long; both are surpassed by some of the congers of our own coasts, and like other murænoid fishes and the known small sea-snakes, (Hydrophis,) swim by undulatory movements of the body.

the Times.

We do not wish to

Now we are willing to admit that this is a pleasant and plausible piece of writing, and 'extremely well calculated to answer the author's purpose, which is to make the world believe that the existence of the sea-serpent is as improbable as the existence of a ghost. hurt the feelings of ghost-seers by expressing an opinion as to these nocturnal gentry; but there is one essential difference between a ghost and the sea-serpent, and it is this: that rigid investigation is constantly damaging the reputation of the one, while it evidently and confessedly adds to the good name of the other. Let the sceptic visit Norway, and he will come back a firm believer in the seaserpent! but let him visit a locality said to be haunted by a ghost, and it is ten to one but he will discover a policeman in the pantry or the servants' bedroom. In another instance, we think the learned professor reckons without his host; The fossil vertebræ and skull which were exhib- he assumes that mariners, because non-naturalists, ited by Mr. Koch, in New York and Boston, as do not know a seal when they see one: this is a those of the great sea-serpent, and which are now manifest error; the men who see sea-serpents are in Berlin, belonged to different individuals of a species which I had previously proved to be an ex-familiar with seals, and, as we have already said, tinct whale; a determination which has subsequent- are not likely to make such mistakes. Again, the ly been confirmed by Professors Müller and Agas-learned professor gives the creature a 66 capacious

BIZ.

Dr. Dixon, of Worthing, has discovered vaulted cranium," thus making it like a seal: many fossil vertebræ in the Eocene tertiary clay this also is a manifest error; the head was remark

with exaggerated representations, nor with what the learned professor, with accurate facts, and not could, by any possibility, proceed from optical illusion; and I beg to assure him that old Pontoppidan having clothed his sea-serpent with a mane could not have suggested the idea of ornamenting the creature seen from the Daedalus with a similar appendage, for the simple reason that I had never seen his account, or even heard of his sea-serpent until my arrival in London. Some other solution must, therefore, be found for the very remarkable coincidence between us in that particular, in order to unravel the mystery.

ably flat, so remarkably flat, that the eye-witnesses | very limited. On this occasion they were not dwell on this character (without knowing its ten- called into requisition, my purpose and desire being, dency) as one worthy of especial notice; and the throughout, to furnish eminent naturalists, such as error here is so extraordinary, that we have thought it desirable to avail ourselves of the liberality of the proprietors of the "Illustrated London News" to republish one of the very drawings of the animal to which the professor alludes, as having appeared in that journal. Let our readers turn to any work on zoology, in which seals are figured, and compare the likeness. Again, the learned professor wants to fix an ophidian nature on the supposed sea-serpent; because a sea-serpent it must be a serpent-this also is a manifest error. A seamouse is not a mouse, a sea-urchin is not an urchin, a sea-horse is not a horse, a sea-lion is not a lion, and so on in every instance where the word sea is used as a prefix. Has Professor Owen yet to learn, and must we have the pleasure of teach-entific may exercise the "pleasures of imagination" ing him that the term sea-mouse is given to a certain animal residing in the sea, because of a real or fancied resemblance to a mouse, but which has no kind of anatomical affinity to the Glires? The same, again, with the urchins: the professor might diligently hunt all the museums in the universe without success, for the vertebræ of marine mice and marine hedgehogs, and thence he might as logically conclude that sea-mice and sea-urchins are as fabulous as ghosts. In fine, we do not find a single passage in the professor's epistle that will bear the scrutiny of an inquirer after truth. But we must hear the captain's reply.

Finally, I deny the existence of excitement or the possibility of optical illusion. I adhere to the statements as to form, color, and dimensions, conleave them as data whereupon the learned and scitained in my official report to the Admiralty, and I

until some more fortunate opportunity shall occur of making a closer acquaintance with the "great unknown"-in the present instance, most assuredly no ghost. P. M'QUHE, late Captain of Her Majesty's ship Dædalus.-Times, November 21, 1848.

To ourselves the evidence appears irresistible, that a certain marine animal of enormous size does exist and that it differs essentially from any living animal described in our systematic works." To this animal mariners have given the very ap propriate name of sea-serpent, from its inhabiting the sea, and from its supposed resemblance to a serpent. It is fifty or sixty feet in length-perProfessor Owen correctly states that I" evident- haps seventy feet-but we may gather from the ly saw a large creature moving rapidly through the multitude of statements that fifty or sixty is a perwater, very different from anything I had before fectly safe estimate; it is long in proportion to its witnessed, neither a whale, a grampus, a great bulk, its neck and tail being of much less circumshark, an alligator, nor any of the larger surface- ference than its body; the junction of the tail and swimming creatures fallen in with in ordinary voy-body is marked by a rapid diminution in size: it ages.' I now assert-neither was it a common seal nor a sea-elephant, its great length and its has a sharp-pointed snout, flat-topped head, powtotally differing physiognomy precluding the pos- erful teeth, very large eyes, and blow-holes, like sibility of its being a "Phoca" of any species. the Cetacea, from which it spouts water; it has The head was flat, and not a "capacious vaulted two very large and powerful flappers, or paddles, cranium;" nor had it "a stiff inflexible trunk"-a with which it makes its way when on the surface conclusion to which Professor Owen has jumped, of the water; it has a dorsal, or cervical crest fin most certainly not justified by the simple statement or mane; its skin is smooth. that no "portion of the sixty feet seen by us was used in propelling it through the water, either by vertical or horizontal undulation."

It is also assumed that the "calculation of its length was made under a strong preconception of the nature of the beast ;" another conclusion quite the contrary to the fact. It was not until after the great length was developed by its nearest approach to the ship, and until after that most important point had been duly considered and debated, as well as such could be in the brief space of time allowed for so doing, that it was pronounced to be a serpent by all who saw it, and who are too well accustomed to judge of lengths and breadths of objects in the sea to mistake a real substance and an actual living body, coolly and dispassionately contemplated, at so short a distance too, for the "eddy caused by the action of the deeper immersed fins and tail of a rapidly-moving gigantic seal raising its head above the surface of the water," as Professor Owen imagines, in quest of its lost iceberg.

The creative powers of the human mind may be

We think it will readily be admitted that no animal answering such a description is known in our methodical arrangements: nay, we very much doubt whether it would not be considered as altogether disturbing these arrangements: geology, however, offers something approaching a solution. In the splendid work of Mr. Hawkins on the

"Extinct Monsters of the Ancient Earth,” we find the delineation of forms quite as remarkable as that which we have attempted to describe from attested depositions. Concerning one of them, Dr. Mantell writes :

The Ichthyosaurus had the back of a porpoise, the teeth of a crocodile, the head and sternum of a lizard, the paddles of Cetacea, and the vertebræ of fish. Some of the species attain the magnitude of young whales. The orbit is very large Like turtles, the animal had four paddles composed of numerous bones enveloped in one fold