Part 105

Captain HARRINGTON’S sea-serpent (n^o. 131), according to Mr. LEE, “was evidently, again, a large calamary raising its caudal extremity and fin above the surface, and discolouring the water by discharging its ink.”

Considering and weighing various explanations hitherto given, Mr. LEE concludes: “I am convinced that, whilst naturalists have been searching amongst the vertebrata for a solution of the problem, the great unknown, and therefore unrecognized, calamaries by their elongated cylindrical bodies and peculiar mode of swimming, have played the part of the sea-serpent in many a well-authenticated incident.”

In answering, again, Mr. GOSSE’S question: “To which of the recognized classes of created beings can this huge rover of the ocean be referred?” he says: “I reply: To the Cephalopoda. There is not one of the above judiciously summarized characteristics that is not supplied by the great calamary, and its ascertained habits and peculiar mode of locomotion.”

With these “above summarized characteristics” are meant those which Mr. GOSSE enumerates in his Romance of Natural History (see p. 318 of the present volume), but which, as we know, are taken by him from only six reports of true sea-serpents, and from a report of a would-be sea-serpent!

The reader will remember that, on one occasion, I explained a would-be sea-serpent by reference to a large calamary, because the head was described “acute” and the colour “crimson”. All true sea-serpents are brownish black, and only in case the animal had swum for a long time in the sun and partly above the surface of the water, the colour is yellowish, grey or greyish. It is true that this colour partly agrees with that of a calamary, when quite at rest or when dead; but generally, when the animal is in motion, and especially in emotion, the colour becomes a reddish-purple or crimson-red. Moreover the long neck, the mane, the extraordinary long tail, the four flappers, are not explained by reference to a calamary.

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The =twenty-third= explanation is proposed by Mr. SEARLES V. WOOD, JUN. in Nature of November 18th., 1880. His article on the “Order Zeuglodontia” closes with the following parenthesis:

“[The animal seen from the Osborne, and figured in the Graphic of June 30th., 1877, as “the sea-serpent”, is quite a different thing from the one in question, and may have been =a manatee=.]”

This figure is our figure 45. Evidently Mr. WOOD did not read the account accurately, and so came to a hasty supposition based on a figure only. The length of the visible part of the animal seen from the Osborne, i. e. “from its crown or top to just below the shoulders, where it became immersed”, was “about fifty feet”, and the length of the flappers “each about fifteen feet”. So this animal had an enormous neck. Now the manatee or sea-cow has a total length of ten feet, the length from the crown or top to just below the shoulders is not more than four feet and there is no question of a neck, as our figure will show. Mr. WOOD committed the mistake, like so many others, that he explained one sea-serpent, instead of first comparing all the reports of it before giving an opinion.

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Let us now place all these explanations side by side. According to different authorities, the sea-serpent may be:

1. A row of porpoises. (Rev. ALDEN BRADFORD, 1803).

2. Scoliophis atlanticus, a new species of snake with bunches on its back. (Hon. JOHN DAVIS, Prof. JACOB BIGELOW, Mr. C. F. GRAY, 1817).

3. A large tunny. (Prof. THOMAS SAY, 1818).

4. A true sea-snake (Hydrophis) of very large size. (Mr. CONSTANT SAMUEL RAFINESQUE SCHMALTZ, 1819).

5. A gigantic individual of the eel-tribe. (Mr. CONSTANT SAMUEL RAFINESQUE SCHMALTZ, 1819).

6. A fable, arisen from Northern Mythology. (Dr. PERCY, 1820?).

7. A basking shark, or a row of sharks. (Mr. SAMUEL L. MITCHILL, 1828).

8. A balaenopterous whale, or a row of them. (Mr. SAMUEL L. MITCHILL, 1828).

9. An Ichthyosaurus, or a saurian allied to it. (Mr. R. BAKEWELL, 1830?).

10. A Plesiosaurus, or a saurian allied to it. (Professor BENJAMIN SILLIMAN, 1830?).

11. Not a saurian. (Prof. BENJAMIN SILLIMAN, 1835).

12. A row of spermwhales. (Professor HERMANN SCHLEGEL, 1837).

13. A Basilosaurus. (Professor MATTHIAS JACOB SCHLEIDEN, 1847).

14. A Saccopharynx or an Ophiognathus. (Anonymous writer in one of the daily papers, 1848, Nov. 6?).

15. A large boa. (Anonymous writer in one of the daily papers, 1848, Nov. 6?).

16. A Macrorhinus leoninus, or sea-elephant. (Professor RICHARD OWEN, 1848, Nov. 9).

17. A large sea-weed. (Commander J. A. HERRIMAN, of the Brazilian, 1849).