Part 29

“A Baby Sea-Serpent.--From Van Diemen’s Land comes news of the capture of a queer fish. It is fourteen feet long, fifteen inches deep from the neck to the belly, tapering two inches to the tail, and eight inches in diameter in the thickest place. There are no scales, but the skin is like polished silver, with eighteen dark lines and rows of spots running from the head to the tail each side. There is a mane on the neck twenty inches long, and continues from the head to the tail; small head, no teeth, protrusive mouth, capable of being extended four inches like a sucker; eyes flat, about the size of a half crown, and like silver, with black pupils. There are two feelers under the chin, thirty-two inches long. The fish was alive when captured.”

Mr. ANDREW WILSON who communicated this capture in Nature of the 12th. of September, 1878, Vol. XVIII, thinks that this account “seems explicable only on the tape fish theory.” I think he might have written “is explicable only on the tape fish theory”, or in short: “this was evidently a tape fish.” A tape fish is identical to a ribband fish. Though these fishes are deep-sea fishes, some species evidently don’t live at great depth, and are occasionally cast ashore after a storm, as had also happened, in 1860, on the Bermudas (see hereabove).

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1879, December 23.--(G. VERSCHUUR, Eene reis rondom de wereld in 480 dagen, p. 51.)

On the 21st. of December, 1879, Mr. VERSCHUUR on board the Granada, left Mazatlan, a harbour on the western coast of Mexico, for San Francisco. Probably on the 23d. the Granada passed Cape San Lucas at 23° N. lat. Mr. VERSCHUUR says:

“Past Cape San Lucas, one afternoon, as I am gazing at the ocean surface, I see a long neck rising out of the water very close to the ship. I beckon some other passengers who are on deck, and after a few minutes the object in question appears a second time. It is the neck of a snake, one would say, and we estimate the length of the visible part of the animal at about a meter. The thickness is about that of the upper-arm of a full-grown man and the head ends in a point, and is as large as a child’s head”.

“We call the whole crew, and the captain as well as some officers run to. But the animal does not appear again. Nevertheless five of us had seen the animal distinctly, so that a violent altercation arose, when one of the officers said we evidently were mistaken, because the sea-serpent did not exist.”

“Nobody of us, it is true, could affirm that it was a sea-serpent. We could only firmly maintain that what we had seen, agreed in all respects with the shape of a serpent.”

“The second officer, who joined in the conversation, declared to have observed in 1871 near the coast of Australia, a sea-serpent which was several meters in length, and when this statement too was called in question, the quarrel got warmer and warmer, and, as it generally happens in such cases, every one kept his own opinion, and the world did not get any the wiser for it.”

“Does the sea-serpent exist, or does he not? This is a problem which has been answered more than once in the most affirmative manner, and also in a negative sense. I have heard the question disputed on more than one voyage.”

In order to obtain more particulars about the animal, I wrote to Mr. VERSCHUUR Oct. 26th., 1889, directing to him the following questions:

“Did the features of the “snake” make on you the impression to be those of a mammal, like those of a seal or sea-lion, though the pointed head more resembled that of a snake?”

“Or had the head, though being much larger, more the shape of that of an eel?”

“Were there just behind the head a pair of fins, as eels have?”

“Why did the visible part make on you the impression to be a “neck”. You speak of a “neck” of a snake. Was the diameter near the head smaller than that just above the water, as if the animal was still thicker under water?”

“Or did you observe the contrary?”

“Was the “snake” perfectly round, or was it provided on its back with a fin, as in eels?”

“What colour had your snake, and had the belly and the back the same colour?”

“Did you observe any eyes, nostrils, ears, ear holes, gills, whiskers, or any other appendages?”

“These are all questions which a zoologist wants to have answered in order to determine somewhat, what animal may have been seen by you.”

Mr. VERSCHUUR had the courtesy to send me an early answer Oct. 30th., 1889. The part of this letter referring to my questions runs as follows:

“I greatly regret to say that my answers will not help you much. The distance at which I saw this strange animal was too great, and the appearance too short, to observe anything of the particulars stated by you.”

“The part which we saw rise out of the sea had, if my memory does not deceive me, the thickness of a full-grown upper-arm, and the length of from 1 to 1¹⁄₂ meter.”

“The head seemed to be round, and of the common shape of a snake’s head, i. e. having nearly the tapering shape of the “cobra” or of the rattlesnake.”

“Of scales, eyes, fins, etc., I could observe nothing, during this short appearance. The colour seemed to me to be a greyish one.”

“I regret not being able to give you more details than those written by me in my book of travels.”

I think this animal was of the eel-tribe, the dimensions were too small even to admit the supposition that it was a spawn of the sea-serpent.

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