Part 25

“Dr. FLEMING” in his History of British Animals, 1828, (this work I have not been able to consult), “in his notice of this animal, suggests that these members were probably the remains of pectoral, ventral and caudal fins.”

Mr. RATHKE in the Archiv für Naturgeschichte of 1841, after having published some accounts, collected by him in Norway about the sea-serpent, and after having declared that he himself is a firm believer in it, goes on:

“To which group of known animals, however, this being belongs, cannot be asserted with any degree of certainty. The supposition, however, is at hand, that it is closely related to that animal, which in 1816” (read 1808) “stranded in Stronsa, one of the Orkneys, and of which several pieces of the skeleton are said to be preserved in the Museum of the University of Edinburgh, and in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. I have read a note about it in the London Journal the Athenaeum, 1839, p. 902, which note is taken from the work: The Naturalist’s Library, Amphibious Carnivora, including the Walrus and Seals, also of the Herbivorous Cetacea. By B. Hamilton, M. D. (Edinburgh, Lizars). An ample description of the saved rests of the animal is said to have been written by Dr. BARCLAY in the first Volume of the Memoirs of the Wernerian Society. I had, however, not the means of consulting this dissertation. According to the above-mentioned note or extract the creature stranded in Stronsa measured 56 feet and had (on its thickest part?) a circumference of 12 feet. The head was small and one foot long, the neck slender and 15 feet long. The organs of motion are said to have consisted of three pairs of fins: one pair of which is believed to have been properly a caudal fin. The foremost pair of fins measured 4 feet; these were the longest, and their tops looked like toes, partly, however, webbed together. From the shoulders a kind of bristly mane extended to near the extremity of the tail. The skin was smooth, without scales and of a grey colour. The eye was as large as a seal’s. The throat was too narrow to admit the hand.”

“Judging from these truly incomplete statements, viz. that the head was relatively very small, the neck very long and slender, and the extremeties were like fins, one may suppose that the animal stranded in Stronsa resembled a Plesiosaurus; and that consequently it belonged to the Amphibia, viz. to the Saurians.”

Prof. Dr. W. F. ERICHSON, the well known Editor of the Archiv für Naturgeschichte, expressed his opinion about the animal of Stronsa, immediately after the appearance of Mr. RATHKE’S dissertation. After having given full details of Mr. BARCLAY’S paper, and an ample description of the saved parts, he says: “All these parts belong undoubtedly to a shark,” and:

“Everard Home already declared the animal to be a shark, and in spite of all that Dr. Barclay asserts to the contrary, it will be so for ever, only it may not have been a Selache maxima, but a Lamna cornubica, which also reaches a considerable length. So the animal of Stronsa has no relation at all with the sea-serpent of the Norwegians.”

I have only to observe that I am surprised that Mr. ERICHSON could arrive at this conclusion, as the Lamna cornubica, or porbeagle has never attained a length above 18 feet.--Our fig. 10 represents a porbeagle.

It is astonishing, yet it is true, that Mr. NEWMAN, the Editor of the Zoologist, after all that had been written about the animal of Stronsa, was not yet convinced of its being a shark. In his journal of 1849, p. 2358, he asked the following

“Inquiries respecting the bones of a large marine animal cast ashore on the Island of Stronsa in 1808.”

“In the “Memoirs of the Wernerian Natural History Society” (vol. I. p. 418) is a paper by Dr. Barclay, on a large animal cast ashore on the island of Stronsa. In illustration of his paper, the Doctor figures the head with a vertebra attached, four other vertebrae and a sternum with a paddle “and two parts corresponding two scapulae” attached. He speaks of the originals of these figures as specimens then before the audience he was addressing. He gives seven inches as the diameter of the head, and two inches as the diameter of the cervical vertebra then still attached to the head. The total length of the animal is given as fifty-five feet, and this from actual admeasurement. It is now positively asserted that the animal in question was a shark; but the utter impossibility of a shark fifty-five feet in length having a head only seven inches in diameter, and cervical vertebrae only two inches in diameter, is so manifest that further inquiry seems desirable; and I shall esteem it a great kindness if any naturalist who may possess the means of doing so will reply to the following questions:--

“1. How were the bones by Dr. Barclay obtained?

“2. What is the evidence that they belonged to one animal?

“3. Where are these bones preserved?

“4. What is their present state?

“5. Has the skull ever been denuded of skin, muscle, etc.?

“6. Has it ever been examined by a competent comparative anatomist? and if so, what opinion has he pronounced on it?

“Surely there are naturalists in Edinburgh who can answer the questions at once. It seems very irrational to speculate on the genus, order or class, to which a recent animal belongs, while the head and sternum of the creature are still in existence.”--

The following “Reply” to these questions was given, printed in the Zoologist for 1849, p. 2396:

“Reply to Mr. NEWMAN’s Inquiries respecting the Bones of the Stronsa Animal.--Seeing your queries regarding the bones of an animal cast on shore at Stronsa, described by Dr. Barclay in the “Memoirs of the Wernerian Society”,--after some little trouble I have been able to answer most of these questions.”

“1. How were the bones described by Dr. Barclay obtained?--It will be seen in the “Wernerian Memoirs” (Vol. I. p. 438), that George Sherar, one of those who saw the animal, mentions that he brought away, to deliver to Mr. Laing (the Scotch historian), the skull, two joints of one of the largest limbs next the head, with different parts of the back-bone, besides the bones that were formerly sent in. Mr. Laing, I suppose, forwarded them to Dr. Barclay.”

“2. What is the evidence that they belonged to one animal?--The answer to this is simply that the aforesaid George Sherar took them from the same animal.”

“3. Where are these bones preserved? 4. What is their present state?--Three of the vertebrae are in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh, in a dried state, and are 6 inches in diameter; and four in the University Natural History Museum, preserved in spirits, and are still articulated to each other, whereas the other three are separate.”

“5. Has the skull ever been denuded of skin, muscle, &c.?--6. Has it ever been examined by a competent comparative anatomist? if so, what opinion has he pronounced on it?--This is answered by the annoying fact that the skull has not been preserved.”

“On inquiring of Professor Goodsir with regard to the vertebrae, he tells me he has examined them, and that they are undoubtedly those of a Shark (Squalus maximus), as are the skull, sternum and scapulae, figured in the “Wernerian Memoirs”, p. 418.”

“We would naturally suppose that the affidavit of those who saw this extraordinary animal would be of some avail; but on closer inspection even these will be found to have little weight in the argument. In the first place it is infortunate that no well-educated person saw it: they were all ignorant, illiterate men, who most likely knew nothing further of a shark than that it was an animal with a huge mouth, capable of discussing so many seamen at a bite, and whose teeth are peculiarly adapted for amputating limbs. In the next place we find these witnesses agreeing in one most absurd particular, viz., in the animal having six legs: on this point it is needless to expatiate; every one knowing anything of comparative anatomy must see at once the impossibility of such a structure: moreover, even granting its possibility, it is at once cancelled by Mr. Urquhart’s figure of the sternum and scapulae with an ordinary fin thereto attached (Wern. Mem. Vol. I. p. 418); the third pair of appendages Dr. Fleming in his “British Animals”, supposes were claspers. In the last place we may notice one striking contradiction in the evidences: Thomas Fotheringhame seems to have been astonished at such a large animal having such a narrow throat,--so narrow indeed that it would not admit his hand; while George Sherar would have had no difficulty in putting his foot down it: and as there is nothing to prove that Thomas Fotheringhame’s hand was larger than George Sherar’s foot, we are led to the conclusion that one or other must have made a mistake in his calculation.”

“We might further suggest the improbability of any animal sixty feet long having a head only seven inches in diameter, and we might even suspect the carpenter’s footrule of showing a decided taste for the marvellous; but we must now conclude with this 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; Musselburgh, February, 1849.”

As to the animal seen by Mr. MACLEAN, see our report n^o. 31, in the following chapter.

One would think that the question about the “animal of Stronsa” was now set at rest. Not at all! Dr. THOMAS STEWART TRAILL wrote a paper about it, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Vol. III, n^o. 44, 1854, June, comparing it with the animal seen by the Captain, officers and crew of H. M. S. Daedalus (see our report n^o. 118 in the next chapter). The part of his dissertation, respecting the “animal of Stronsa” runs as follows: