Part 98

An =eleventh= explanation is properly a negative one. In the American Journal of Science and Arts, of 1835, viz: Prof. BENJAMIN SILLIMAN, the Editor, published a report of one of his acquaintances, wherein the eye-witness declared: “nothing like a fin was seen”. Now Prof. SILLIMAN in a Remark of the Editor says: “The absence of paddles or arms =forbids us from supposing that this was a swimming saurian=.”

I need not observe that this explanation was premature, and that the assertion “nothing like a fin was seen” does not exclude the presence of flappers, hidden under water. The flappers of a swimming sea-lion or seal are not generally seen either. If not a saurian, what kind of animal could it be then, a fish or a mammal?

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The =twelfth= explanation, viz: =a row of spermwhales=, which is found in Prof. SCHLEGEL’S Essai sur la physionomie des Serpens, 1837, p. 518, is better than that of a row of porpoises or of basking sharks, with their plainly visible backfins, for there is a species of spermwhales, viz. the Catodon macrocephalus the backfin of which is so small as to be almost invisible. The other species, Physeter tursio has a rather large and erected backfin.

Professor SCHLEGEL, after describing the appearance of a row of porpoises swimming in line, goes on saying: “This habit is also common to the larger cetaceans, which, however, only accidentally frequent our” (the Dutch) “coasts. The coasts of North-America, where the monstrous sea-serpent has so often been observed, swarm with them, and I confess that from a vessel, for instance, the unexpected appearance of a family of spermwhales swimming in line, with the eldest at the head, must offer a spectacle striking enough and fit to call forth at once superstition, imagination and fear.”

It is true that a row of sperm-whales must offer a striking spectacle, but in none of the accounts of the sea-serpent the “bunches” or visible parts of the vertical undulations surpassed the length of a fathom, whilst the visible parts of the backs of spermwhales measure several fathoms, and the distance between two of these backs in a row of spermwhales is enormous. The supposition, moreover, does not explain the head resembling that of a snake, and kept constantly above water, neither the long neck accidentally observed, the long and pointed tail, &c.

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The =thirteenth= explanation supposes that the sea-serpent may be a still living =Basilosaurus=, an extinct marine mammal, first described by HARLAN in the year 1824; afterwards the name was changed to that of Zeuglodon by Prof. RICHARD OWEN. Fig. 65 represents the skeleton of a Basilosaurus. This animal lived in the tertiary periods. Almost all the characters of the skeleton remind us of Pinnipeds, only a few of Cetaceans, and so it is still doubtful to which order it belongs. Professor D’ARCY W. THOMPSON rejects all association with the Cetacea (Studies from the Museum of Zoology in University College, Dundee, Vol. I. N^o. 9.) The length of the largest skeletons measured seventy-five feet. The teeth and molars are nearly exactly those of seals. The nostrils were situated at the tip of the nose, as in seals, most probably, however, they were directed upwards. The bones of the rather short fore-extremities resemble those of seals. Most probably these limbs were provided with nails, as in seals. But, on the other hand, of some of the known skulls the remaining part shows an affinity to cetaceans. The vertebrae again are seal-like. Till now it is unknown whether the animal had hind-extremities or not, for the bones of them are not yet discovered. The body must have been rather slender and cylindrical. I venture to represent to my readers in fig. 66, a Basilosaurus restored. As the bones of the fore-extremities closely resemble those of seals, it is probable that small hind-extremities were not wanting. If the former resembled those of dolphins, the existence of hind-flappers would be problematic. Yet I have omitted them, because the bones of them are not yet discovered, as far as I know.

The reader will remember that Dr. KOCH (see our Chapter on Hoaxes and Cheats) exhibited a large skeleton in Broadway, New-York, under the name of Hydrarchos Sillimanni. This skeleton was made by him out of several bones of the extinct Basilosaurus. The imposture was soon discovered by Prof. WYMAN, and, of course, immediately published in all kinds of newspapers, which also reached Europe. In FRORIEP’S Neue Notizen, of February, 1846, is one of these articles translated into German. Consequently we may conclude that the translator of this article knew that the Hydrarchos Sillimanni was, in fact, made up of bones of the Basilosaurus. Now we find in FRORIEP’S Notizen, Third Series, Vol. III, n^o. 54, p. 148, 1847, a suggestion of a writer who wrote under the initials M. J. S. (evidently the Editor, the well-known Professor MATTHIAS JACOB SCHLEIDEN: I have searched the Bibliotheca Zoologica of CARUS and ENGELMANN, and not found another author whose name has these initials):

“Is the sea-serpent perhaps identical with the Hydrarchus, viz. a still living species, a still present remainder, though in a few individuals, of former periods?”

I think that this means: “Are there perhaps still living Basilosauri, and is the sea-serpent perhaps one of these creatures?”

Mr. SEARLES V. WOOD, JUN. wrote in Nature of 18th. of November, 1880, Vol. 23, a paper, entitled: “Order Zeuglodontia”, in which he tries to show that the sea-serpent most probably belongs to this Order. The contents of his paper are as follows:

“In August 1848 H. M. S. Daedalus encountered off St. Helena a marine animal, of which a representation appeared in the Illustrated News of the latter part of that year. It is thirty-two years since I saw this figure, but I recollect that it was one of a blunt-nosed animal with a neck carried about four feet above the water, which was so long as to present the appearance of a serpent; and I remember that Prof. Owen, in combating at the time the idea that this was a sea-serpent, pointed out that the position of the gape in relation to the eye, as shown in the figure in the Illustrated News, was that of a mammal, and not that of a reptile; in consequence of which he argued that the animal seen was probably only a leonine seal, whose track through the water gave an illusory impression of great length. This idea, however, seemed to me untenable in the face of the representation in the Illustrated News; but it was obvious that to afford the buoyancy necessary for the support above the water of so long a neck (estimated on that occasion as sixty feet though only the part near the head was actually out of the water), the submerged portion of the animal could not have had the shape of a serpent.”

“Two or three years after this, on reading the description of Zeuglodon cetoides, from the Tertiary (probably Upper Eocene) formations of Alabama, it struck me that the animal seen from the Daedalus may have been a descendant of the order to which Zeuglodon belonged; and I have ever since watched with interest for reports of the “great sea-serpent”.”

“Three years ago the following appeared in the newspapers.”

Here Mr. SEARLES WOOD copies the whole affidavit of the crew of the Pauline (n^o. 144), and adds:

“The locality here specified was about thirty miles off the northern coast of Brazil.”

And he goes on:

“In this account I thought that I recognized the grip of the whale by the long neck of the attacking animal, the appearance being confounded into the double coil of a serpent by the distance and motions of the objects; but in face of the general ridicule which has been attached to this subject, and being without any assurance that the declaration so purporting to be made was genuine, I did not venture to ventilate my long-cherished idea. A relative of mine, however, just returned from India, chancing to say that two of the officers to the steamer in which she went out had on the previous voyage witnessed an immense animal rear its neck thirty feet out of the water, and that a sketch of the object had been instantly made, and on reaching port sent to the Graphic. I obtained the number of that paper for July 19, 1879, and I inclose a tracing of the figures in it, which are accompanied by the following statement in the Graphic:--”

The statement of the Kiushiu Maru is further copied, accompanied by the two figures (see n^o. 151, figg. 48 and 49), and he continues saying:

“As I have not been able to find any description of the skeleton of the Zeuglodon, I venture to draw attention to the subject through your columns, in the hope that among your many readers in America this letter may attract the notice of some one who will tell us whether what is known of the osseous structure of Zeuglodon cetoides is or is not consistent with the representation in the Graphic. The remains of the cetacean, supposed to be extinct, indicate, according to Sir Charles Lyell, that it was at least seventy feet in length, (He observes in the third edition of his “Manual of Elementary Geology”, 1851, p. 208, that he visited the spot where a vertebral column of this length belonging to Zeuglodon had been dug up.) while its great double-faced but knife-edged molars show that it was carnivorous; and as we are not so far removed from the period of the Alabama Tertiaries as to render it improbable that members of what must once have been a great Order of carnivorous cetacea, totally distinct from the orders of cetacea hitherto known as living, may still survive, I have braved the ridicule attaching to this subject so far as to invite attention to it.”

“The second of the two figures in the Graphic shows the long necked animal to possess the cetacean tail, and its head there seems to have been turned from the observer, so that the underside of it only is presented. The first figure shows that the whale had been seized on its flank by the powerful bite of its aggressor, and that to escape from this it had thrown itself out of the water. Having succeeded in this object the second figure shows the aggressor rearing its head and neck out of the water to discover the direction which its prey had taken, in order that it might follow it up; and so far from the charge of curious drawing made by the editor of the Graphic being justified, the representation of the whale can be at once recognized as fairly correct; while that of the tail of the unknown animal (which probably prompted this charge), so far from being curious, forms an important piece of evidence as showing the animal in question to be catacean.”

This paper had already been sent to the Editors of Nature, when Mr. SEARLES V. WOOD, JUN., observed that he was mistaken as to the report, and as soon as possible he sent a Postscript to the Editors, which appeared appended to his paper. The postscript runs as follows:

“P. S. Since sending to you the above I have again seen my relative, and find that the cut in the Graphic of July 19, 1879, is not that of the instance observed from the steamer in which she came home, which was the City of Washington; but of a separate instance which occurred to another ship. I have not been able yet to procure the Graphic containing the figure of the animal seen from the City of Washington, but she tells me that it was pasted up in the saloon and represented only the head and long neck of the animal, which was raised to a great height out of the water, and near to the ship; and had been drawn for the Graphic by a lady passenger immediately after the occurrence. These repeated and independent notices of the same long necked are, however, the more confirmatory of its existence.”

“I find that Prof. Owen in his article on Palaeontology in the Encyclopedia Britannica (Vol. XVII, p. 166), in giving a description of Zeuglodon cetoides, says that “the skull is very long and narrow and the nostril single”, that Dr. Harlan obtained the teeth on which, correcting Harlan’s reptilian reference of them, he founded the order Zeuglodontia, from the Miocene of Malta; and that the teeth discovered by Grateloup in the Miocene beds of the Gironde and Herault, and described by him also to a reptile under the name of Squalodon, are those of a smaller species of Zeuglodon. The remains of Squalodon, along with those of the shark with huge teeth, Carcharodon megalodon, and of numerous cetaceans assigned to orders all still living, and of which some, such as Delphinus, belong to living genera, occur in the “Sables inférieures” of Antwerp; which, though long called Miocene, are by Mr. Van den Broeck regarded as older Pliocene, and as the base of that series of deposits of which the middle and upper divisions are respectively represented by the Coralline and Red Crags of England; and with these “Sables inférieures” the so called Miocene of Malta, in which Zeuglodon is associated with Carcharodon, is probable coeval. Dr. Gibbes (Jour. Acad. Nat. Sc., 2d. ser., vol. I, p. 143), figures and describes teeth of the Antwerp species of Carcharodon from both the Eocene of South Carolina and Miocene of Alabama. These various references bring the Zeuglodonts, with their Carcharodon associates, down to a late geological period during which they co-existed with Delphinian prey; and of this prey the whale in the woodcut (which looks like a Grampus) seems an example”.

“It is most likely that Bishop Pontoppidan, a copy of the English (1755) edition of whose work I possess, concocted his two figures (one of which is that of a huge snake undulating on the waves, and the other that of a serpent-like animal with pectoral flappers or fins, resting almost on the surface of the sea, with head and tail erect out of the water like the letter U, and spouting water or steam from its mouth in a single column), from accounts given him by Norwegian seamen, some of whom had seen the animal in the position in which it was observed from the Daedalus, and others in that in which it is represented in the cut as seen from the Kiushiu-maru; for in the long narrative which he gives of the descriptions received from observers at numerous times, some of these agree with the one, and some with the other, though both of the Bishop’s figures represent only preposterous conceptions of his own.”

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

I shall take the liberty to make some remarks on his paper.