Part 96

Here again I am obliged to make some remarks.

The communications made by Captain M’QUHAE and Lieutenant DRUMMOND are inserted in the foregoing Chapter (n^o. 118).--The statement of Captain SULLIVAN and five other British officers is that of 1833, May 15th., inserted above. (n^o. 97.)

Ever and anon Mr. NEWMAN shows that the statements referred to by him are those of British officers. Why so? Is a British officer more trustworthy than an officer of any other nation?

What zoologist or palaeontologist has ever shared Mr. NEWMAN’S doubt of the reptilian nature of the Enaliosaurians!? Who would like to bring these extinct creatures under a newly founded order of Cetacean Marsupials!! Did not Mr. NEWMAN’S suggestion originate in the two facts 1. That he himself thought the sea-serpent to be an Enaliosaurian, and 2. That Prof. OWEN asserted that the sea-serpent of Captain M’QUHAE, according to his description and figures, must be a mammal? I think Mr. NEWMAN reasoned further: “well, why should the Enaliosaurians not be mammals?”

“The enormous length of the animal, three times that of a boa, militates against this hypothesis”, viz. of being a boa. This is no argument. In the time that only calamaries were known of 6 or 7 feet length, with arms of 10 or 11 feet, nobody had ever dreamt that there existed really individuals of 30 feet in length with long arms of 50 feet!

It is evident that Mr. NEWMAN was wrongly informed about the Saccopharynx flagellum, for this animal is a kind of fish, belonging to the eel-tribe, however not in the least resembling an eel in its external characters, and not a black snake!

The “separate essay, now preparing for the press” as far as I know has never been published.

The quotation of the Ichthyosaurus shows us that Mr. NEWMAN was unwilling to give up his first suggestion. The evidence, referred to by him, where the sea-serpent had apparently two flappers near the head, is the same as that referred to by Dr. COGSWELL, (see pp. 409, 411, and n^o. 115.).

After observing that other sea-serpents, e. g. that of Captain M’QUHAE don’t come up to his Ichthyosaurian suggestion, Mr. NEWMAN concludes that “the enormous creatures in all probability will eventually be found to constitute several genera and species!!!

The favourite Plesiosaurian hypothesis is also spoken of by the writer of the “Reply to Mr. Newman’s Inquiries respecting the bones of the Stronsa Animal” (which I have inserted in my Chapter on Would-be sea-serpents). He says:

“But we must now conclude with the 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.

As to the animal of Mr. MACLEAN, see our n^o. 31.

Mr. NEWMAN in the Preface to the Zoologist for 1849, wrote the following about the Reptiles mentioned in this volume. The words are worth quoting.

“In British Reptiles nothing remarkable has occurred; but I have been favoured with a communication, published in the February number (Zool. 2356), announcing the present existence of huge marine animals closely related to the Enaliosauri of by-gone ages, that appears to me in all respects the most interesting Natural History-fact of the present century, completely overturning as it does some of the most favourite and fashionable hypotheses of geological science. The published opinion of Mr. Agassiz (Zool. 2395) certainly favours the idea that Enaliosaurians may still exist: he says: it would be in precise conformity with analogy that an animal should exist in the American seas which has long been extinct and fossilized in the Eastern hemisphere: he instances the gar-pike of the western rivers, and says that, in a recent visit to Lake Superior, he has detected several fishes belonging to genera now extinct in Europe.”

The communication mentioned here is that of Captain HOPE, who saw the sea-serpent in the Gulf of California (n^o. 119). In fact, since this opinion was expressed by AGASSIZ, (where?) numerous animals, even of tolerably large size, have been discovered in Australia as well as in the great depth of the ocean, the allies of which are only found in a fossilized state.

The favourite Plesiosaurus hypothesis is also treated of and finally adopted by Mr. GOSSE, in his Romance of Natural History. After rejecting the hypotheses of the sea-serpent being only a deceitful huge stem of sea-weed, or a large seal, a cetacean, a basking shark, a large ribbon-fish, some large kind of the eel tribe, a large specimen of true sea-snakes, a strayed large land-snake as the boas, he goes on in the following manner:

“It yet remains to consider the hypothesis advanced by Mr. E. Newman, Mr. Morries Stirling, and “F. G. S.”, that the so called sea-serpent will find its closest affinities with those extraordinary animals, the Enaliosauria, or Marine Lizards, whose fossil skeletons are found so abundantly scattered through the oolite and the lias. The figure of Plesiosaurus, as restored in Professor Ansted’s Ancient World, has a cranium not less capacious or vaulted than that given in Captain M’Quhae’s figures; to which, indeed, but that the muzzle in the latter is more abbreviate, it bears a close resemblance. The head was fixed at the extremity of a neck composed of thirty to forty vertebrae, which, from its extraordinary length, slenderness, and flexibility, must have been the very counterpart of the body of a serpent. This snake-like neck merged insensibly into a compact and moderately slender body, which carried two pairs of paddles, very much like those of a sea-turtle, and terminated behind in a gradually attenuated tail”.

“Thus, if the Plesiosaur could have been seen alive, you would have discerned nearly its total length at the surface of the water, propelled at a rapid rate, without any undulation, by an apparatus altogether invisible,--the powerful paddles beneath; while the entire serpentine neck would probably be projected obliquely, carrying the reptilian head, with an eye of moderate aperture, and a mouth whose gape did not extend beyond the eye. Add to this a covering of the body not formed of scales, bony plates, or other form of solidified integument, but a yielding, leathery skin, probably black and smooth, like that of a whale; give the creature a length of some sixty feet or more, and you would have before you almost the very counterpart of the apparition that wrought such amazement on board the Daedalus. The position of the nostrils at the summit of the head indicates that on first coming on the surface from the depths of the sea, the animal would spout in the manner of the whales,--a circumstance reported by some observers of the sea-serpent.”

“I must confess that I am myself far more disposed to acquiesce in this hypothesis than in any other that has been mooted. Not that I would identify the animal seen with the actual Plesiosaurs of the lias. None of them yet discovered appear to exceed thirty-five feet in length, which is scarcely half sufficient to meet the exigencies of the case. I should not look for any species, scarcely even any genus, to be perpetuated from the oolitic period to the present. Admitting the actual continuation of the order Enaliosauria, it would be, I think, quite in conformity with general analogy to find important generic modifications, probably combining some salient features of several extinct forms. Thus the little known Pliosaur had many of the peculiarities of the Plesiosaur, without its extraordinarily elongated neck, while it vastly exceeded it in dimensions. What if the existing form should be essentially a Plesiosaur, with the colossal magnitude of a Pliosaur?”

“There seems to be no real structural difficulty in such a supposition except the “mane”, or waving appendage, which has so frequently been described by those who profess to have seen the modern animal. This, however, is a difficulty of ignorance, rather than of contradiction. We do not know that the smooth integument of the Enaliosaurs was destitute of any such appendage, and I do not think there is any insuperable unprobability in the case. The nearest analogy that I can suggest, however, is that of the Chlamydosaur, a large terrestrial lizard of Australia, whose lengthened neck is furnished with a very curious plaited frill of thin membrane, extending like wings or fins to a considerable distance from the animal.”

(Foot-note:) [“It was not till after this paragraph was written that I noticed the very close similarity of the fins with which Hans Egede has adorned his figure of the sea-serpent (copied in the Illustrated London News, Oct. 28, 1848), to the frill of the Chlamydosaurus.”]

“Two strong objections, however, stand in the way of our acceptance of the present existence of Enaliosauria; and these are forcibly presented by Professor Owen. They are,--1. The hypothetical improbability of such forms having been transmitted from the era of the secondary strata to the present time; and 2. The entire absence of any parts of the carcases or unfossilized skeletons of such animals in museums.”

“My ignorance of the details of palaeontology makes me feel very diffident in attempting to touch the former point, especially when so great an authority has pronounced an opinion; still I will modestly express one or two thoughts on it.”

“There does not seem any à priori reason why early forms should not be perpetuated; and examples are by no means rare of animals much anterior, geologically, to the Enaliosaurs, being still extant. The very earliest forms of fishes are of the Placoid type, and it is remarkable that not only is that type still living in considerable numbers, but the most gigantic examples of this class belong to it,--viz. the sharks and rays; and these exhibiting peculiarities which by no means remove them far from ancient types. The genus Chimaera appears in the oolite, the wealden, and the chalk; disappears (or rather is not found) in any of the tertiary formations, but reappears, somewhat rarely, in the modern seas. It is represented by two species inhabiting respectively the Arctic and Antarctic Oceans.”

“Now, this is exactly a parallel case to what is conjectured of the Enaliosaurs. They appear in the oolite and the chalk, are not found in the tertiary strata, but reappear, rarely, in the modern seas, represented by two or more species inhabiting the Northern and Southern Oceans.”

“Among Reptiles, the curious family of river tortoises named Trionychidae, distinguished by their long neck, and a broad cartilaginous margin to the small back-shell, appears first in the wealden. No traces occur of it in any subsequent formation, till the present period, when we find it represented by the large and savage inhabitants of the Mississippi, the Nile, and the Ganges.”

“What is still more to the purpose is, that the Iguanodon, a vast saurian which was contemporary with the Plesiosaur and Ichthyosaur, though transmitting no observed representative of its form through the tertiary era, is yet well represented by the existing Iguanadae of the American tropics.”

“It is true the Iguana is not an Iguanodon; but the forms are closely allied. I do not suppose that the so-called sea-serpent is an actual Plesiosaur, but an animal bearing a similar relation to that ancient type. The Iguanodon has degenerated (I speak of the type, and not of the species) to the small size of the Iguana; the Plesiosaurus may have become developed to the gigantic dimensions of the sea-serpent.”