Part 100

“I do not attach much value to the assertions of observers, that the head of the animal seen by them respectively was “undoubtedly that of a snake.” Such comparisons made by persons unaccustomed to mark the characteristic peculiarities which distinguish one animal from another, are vague and unsatisfactory. Their value, at all events, is rather negative than positive. For example, if a person of liberal education and general information, but no naturalist, were to tell me he had seen a creature with a head “exactly like that of a snake”, I should understand him, that the head was not that of an ordinary beast, nor of a bird, nor that of the generality of fishes; but I should have no confidence at all that it was not as like that of a lizard as of a serpent, and should entertain doubt whether, if I showed him the form of head, even of certain fishes, he would not say, “Yes, it was something like that.”

“There does not seem, then, any sufficient evidence that the colossal animal seen from the Daedalus, and on other occasions, is a serpent, in the sense in which zoologists use that term. A lengthened cylindrical form it seems to have; but, for anything that appears, it may as well be a monstrous eel, or a slender cetacean, as anything. All analogies and probabilities are against its being an ophidian.”

It is remarkable that Mr. GOSSE is disposed to believe that the sea-serpent of the General Coole was a boa, because the report speaks of “a snake”, and that he cannot believe that the sea-serpent of the Daedalus was a boa, though the captain, Mr. M’QUHAE, clearly tells that he saw “a serpent, the head of which, without any doubt, was that of a snake”. Now I ask what is the difference between “a snake” and “a serpent with a head of a snake”!? What, in short, is the difference between a snake and a serpent? Though he attaches a considerable value to the assertion of the captain of the General Coole who speaks of “a snake, and nothing more”, Mr. GOSSE “does not attach much value to the assertions of observers, that the head of the animal seen by them was undoubtedly that of a snake”. How to make this agree?

Mr. LEE in his Sea Monsters Unmasked says: “a marine snake of enormous size may, really, have been seen”. As I think he means in this instance, a land-snake which occasionally frequents the sea, as the Boa murina, I have placed this supposition here, and I have not considered it as identical to the fourth explanation.

As a snake has no paddles or flappers, and is unable to undulate vertically, the sea-serpent cannot be such an animal. Moreover the boas are only inhabitants of tropical America and adjacent seas.

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The =sixteenth= explanation is given by Professor RICHARD OWEN, viz.: that the sea-serpent is a swimming =large seal=. I refer my readers to his answer to a nobleman’s question, what Captain M’Quhae could have seen, inserted in our foregoing Chapter (n^o. 118). After having enumerated all the characters of the animal seen by captain M’QUHAE, taken from the figures as well as from the descriptions, Professor OWEN comes to the conclusion: “All these are the characters of the head of a warm-blooded mammal..... Guided by the above interpretation, of the “mane of a horse, or a bunch of sea-weed”, the animal was not a cetacean mammal, but rather a great seal. But what seal of large size, or indeed of any size, would be encountered in latitude 24° 44′ south, and longitude 9° 22′ east?” Professor OWEN further concludes: Phoca proboscidea or Phoca leonina. Very remarkable is the fact that a few lines before, the Professor said of the animal’s length: “This is the only part of the description, however, which seems to me to be so uncertain as to be inadmissable, in an attempt to arrive at a right conclusion as to the nature of the animal”. (The italics are mine).

In fig. 69 I show my readers the Macrorhinus leoninus, LINNÉ, or sea-elephant, of which Phoca leonina, LINNÉ, and Phoca proboscidea, PÉRON, are synonyms. The adult males have an elongated tubercular proboscis, the young ones and the females, one of which is seen in the background of my drawing, have the common features of seals.

Mr. H. E. STRICKLAND and Mr. A. G. MELVILLE in the note added to their dissertation on the Dodo, in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History, 2d. series, Vol. II, p. 444, Nov. 15? 1848, say of Prof. OWEN’S letter that it “gives a simple and clear explanation of the circumstances that have recently attracted attention, and briefly, but conclusively, discusses the question of existence of the Great Sea-Serpent generally.”

Captain M’QUHAE, on the contrary, at once rejects the idea of a seal. His letter is interesting enough to be read over again; I therefore refer my readers to it (n^o. 118).

Mr. FRORIEP, in his Notizen, Third Series, X. p. 97, of July, 1849, after having inserted in his columns extracts from the statement of Lieutenant DRUMMOND, from that of Captain M’QUHAE, from the hoax of the Daphne, from the suggestion of Mr. MANTELL, from that of Prof. OWEN, &c. &c. finally concludes:

“We therefore observe from all these articles that nothing is still fixed about the existence or non-existence of the great sea-serpent; yet so much seems inquestionable now, that there must be a large sea-animal, still unknown, and not quite unlike a snake; but whether this monster is a snake, nay even belongs to the family of the amphibians, this gets more and more doubtful after the objections of Prof. OWEN.”

Mr. GOSSE, in his Romance of Natural History treats of the seal-hypothesis in the following manner:

“Among animals, the Vertebrata are the only classes supposable. But of these, which? Birds are out of the question; but Mammalia, Reptilia, Pisces,--there is no antecedent absurdity in assigning it to either of these. Each of these classes contains species of lengthened form, of vast dimensions, of pelagic habit; and to each has the creature been, by different authorities, assigned.”

“Let us, then, look at the Mammalia. Here Professor Owen would place it; and his opinion on a zoological question has almost the force of an axiom. I trust I shall not be accused of presumption if I venture to examine the decision of one whom I greatly respect. It is true, his reasoning applies directly only to the creature seen from the Daedalus; but we are bound to consider the exigencies not only of that celebrated case, but of all the other well-authenticated cases.”

“Prof. Owen thus draws up the characters of the animal:--“Head with a convex, moderately capacious cranium, short obtuse muzzle, gape not extending further than the eye; eye rather small, round, filling closely the palpebral aperture; colour, dark brown above, yellowish white beneath; surface smooth, without scales, scutes, or other conspicuous modifications of hard and naked cuticle; nostrils not mentioned, but indicated in the drawing by a crescentic mark at the end of the nose or muzzle; 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 earlier of these characters are those “of the head of a warm-blooded mammal; none of them those of a cold-blooded reptile or fish”. The comparison of the dimly-seen something on the back to a horse’s mane or sea-weed, seems to indicate a clothing of hair; and, guided by this interpretation, the Professor judges that the animal was not a cetacean, but rather a great seal.”

“Now, it is manifest that it was from the pictorial sketches, more than from the verbal description of Captain M’Quhae, that this diagnosis was drawn up. And if the drawings had been made from the life, under the direction of a skilful zoologist, nothing could be more legitimate than such a use of them. But surely it has been overlooked that they were made under no such circumstances. Only one of the published representations was original; and this was taken “immediately after the animal was seen”. That is, one of the officers, who could draw, went below immediately, and attempted to reproduce what his eye was still filled with. Now, what could one expect under such conditions? Of course, the artist was not a zoologist, or we should have had a zoologist’s report. Would the drawing so produced be of any value? Surely yes; of great value. It would doubtless be a tolerably faithful representation of the general appearance of the object seen, but nothing more; its form, and position, and colour, and such of the details as the observer had distinctly noticed, and marked down, so to speak, in his mind, would be given; but a great deal of the details would be put in by mere guess. When a person draws from an object before him, he measures the various lines, curves, angles, relative distances, and so on, with his eye, one by one, and puts them down seriatim; ever looking at the part of the original on which he is working, for correction. But no possibility of doing this was open to the artistic midshipman; he had merely his vivid, but necessarily vague, idea of the whole before him as the original from which he drew. Who is there that could carry all the details of an object in the memory, after a few minutes’ gaze, and that, too, under strong excitement? This was not the case even of a cool professional artist, called in to view an object for the purpose of depicting it; in all probability the officer had not thought of sketching it till all was over, and had made no precise observations, his mind being mainly occupied by wonder. He sits down, pencil in hand; he dashes in the general outline at once; now he comes to details,--say the muzzle, the facial angle;--of course, his figure must have some facial angle, some outline of muzzle; but probably he had particularly noticed that point. What shall he do? there is no original before him, a glance at which would decide; he sketches on a scrap of paper by his side two or three forms of head; perhaps he shows the paper to a brother officer, with a question, “Which of these do you think most like the head?” and then he puts the one selected in his sketch, and so of other details.”

“Those who are not used to drawing will think I am making a caricature. I am doing no such thing. I have been accustomed for nearly forty years to draw animals from the life; and the public are able to judge of my power of representing what I see; but I am quite sure that if I were asked to depict an object unfamiliar to me, which I had been looking at for a quarter of an hour, without thinking that I should have to draw it, I should do, in fifty points of detail, just what I have supposed the officer to have done. Let my reader try it. Get hold of one of your acquaintances, whom you know to be a skilful, but non-professional artist, whose attention has never been given to flowers; take him into your greenhouse, and show him some very beautiful thing in blossom; keep him looking at it for some ten minutes without a hint of what you are thinking of; then take him into your drawing-room, put paper and colours before him, and say, “Make me a sketch of that plant you have just seen!” When it is done, take it to a botanist, and ask him to give you the characters of the genus and species from the sketch; or compare it yourself with the original, and note how many and what ludicrous blunders had been made in details, while there was a fair general correctness.”

“Viewed in this light, it will be manifest how inefficient the sketch made on board the Daedalus must be for minute characters; and particularly those which in the diagnosis above I have marked with italics. Yet these are the characters mainly relied on to prove the mammalian nature of the animal. Some of these characters could not possibly have been determined at two hundred yards’ distance. I say “mainly relied on”; because there is the manelike appendage yet to be accounted for. This is a strong point certainly in favour of a mammalian, and of a phocal nature; whether it decides the question, however, I will presently examine.”

“The head in either of the large sketches (those, I mean, in which the creature is represented in the sea) does not appear to me at all to resemble that of a seal; nor do I see a “vaulted cranium”. The summit of the head does not rise above the level of the summit of the neck; in other words, the vertical diameter of the head and neck are equal, while there are indications that the occiput considerably exceeds the neck in transverse diameter. This is not the case with any seal, but it is eminently characteristic of eels, of many serpents, and some lizards. Let the reader compare the lower figure (Illustrated London News, Oct. 28, 1848) with that of the Broadnosed Eel in Yarrell’s British Fishes (ed. ii. Vol. ii. p. 396). The head of some of the scincoid lizards (the Jamaican Celestus ociduus, for instance) is not at all unlike that represented; it is full as vaulted, and as short, but a little more pointed, and with a flatter facial angle. On this point the Captain’s assertion corrects the drawing; for, in reply to Professor Owen, he distinctly asserts that “the head was flat, and not a capacious vaulted cranium;” and the description of Lieutenant Drummond, published before any strictures were made on the point, says, “the head.... was long, pointed, and flattened at the top, perhaps ten feet in length, the upper jaw projecting considerably.”

“With regard to the “mane”. The great Phoca proboscidea is the only seal which will bear comparison with the Daedalus animal in question, reaching from twenty to thirty feet. H. M. officers declare that upwards of sixty feet of their animal were visible at the surface; but Mr. Owen supposes, not improbably, that the disturbance of the water produced by progression induced an illusive appearance of a portion of this length. But how much? Suppose all behind thirty feet, the extreme length of the elephant seal. Then it is impossible the animal could have been such a seal, for the following reason. The fore paws of the seal are placed at about one-third of the total length from the muzzle; that is, in a seal of thirty feet long, at ten feet behind the muzzle. But twenty feet of the “serpent” were projected from the water, and yet no appearance of fins was seen. Lieutenant Drummond judges the head to have been ten feet in length (with which the lower figure, assuming sixty or sixty-five feet as the total length drawn; well agrees); and besides this, at least an equal length of neck was exposed.”

“But the great Phoca proboscidea has no mane at all. For this, we must have recourse to other species, known as sea-lions. Two kinds are recognized under this name, Otaria jubata and Platyrhynchus leoninus; though there is some confusion in the names. Neither of these ever exceeds sixteen feet in total length, of which, about five feet would be the utmost that could project from the water in swimming. Suppose, however, the eyes of the gallant officers to have magnified the leonine seal to sufficient dimensions; I fear even then it will not do. For the mane in these animals is a lengthening and thickening of the hair on the occiput and on the neck, just as in the lion. But the “serpent’s” mane was not there, but “perhaps twenty feet in the rear of the head” says Lieutenant Drummond; it “washed about its back”, says Captain M’Quhae.”

“I do not hesitate to say, therefore, that on data we at present possess, the seal hypothesis appears to me quite untenable.”

I think that the reader will easily see that Mr. GOSSE in discussing the mammalian character of the sea-serpent, and we may add: especially of the sea-serpent seen by Captain M’QUHAE, was prepossessed with his idea of the sea-serpent being an Enaliosaurian.--Mr. GOSSE points out that the vertical diameter of the head and neck are equal; but he does not fix the reader’s attention to the fact that if this were really the case, the estimation of the length of the head by Lieutenant DRUMMOND at “ten feet” and that of the diameter of the neck by Captain M’QUHAE at “sixteen inches” don’t agree at all!--In none of the reports of the animal of the Daedalus there is question of the “serpent” being “twenty feet projected from the water”; it is only stated that the head was kept four feet above the water.--Neither do the reports mention how much of the neck was exposed, besides the head: Mr. GOSSE says “an equal length”.--Lieutenant DRUMMOND did not say that the mane was “perhaps twenty feet in the rear of the head”: the gallant officer, on the contrary, did not mention the mane at all!--

Prof. OWEN relying upon the descriptions of Captain M’QUHAE and drawings of one of the midshipmen, and admitting all their statements to be true and their sketches to be as accurate as possible, absolutely rejects the estimation of the length of the animal at “sixty-feet at least”; in doing so he of course could not possibly come to another conclusion than that the animal was a mammal, and to the question: “which mammal could it have been? his reply could not be otherwise than: “a large seal”. It is evident that for this reason he recalled to his mind all the sea-mammals known to him, but he seems to have totally overlooked the possibility of the existence of sea-mammals unknown to him!!! The conclusion: “the animal was a large seal” leads the Professor to write: “A larger body of evidences from eye-witnesses might be got together in proof of ghosts than of the sea-serpent”. The Professor would never have expressed such an opinion, if he had examined all the reports about the animal, and all that had been written about it up to his time. It is evident that, without a thorough investigation a sceptic must remain a sceptic.

I need not say, why the sea-serpent cannot be a sea-elephant. The latter has a proboscis, the sea-serpent has none, the sea-elephant has no long neck, no long tail, no mane, whereas these characters are very prominent in the sea-serpent.

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