Part 99

The reader will remember (see n^o. 118) that it was not the long neck of the animal, which caused the comparison of a snake, made by the officers of the Daedalus, but the roundness of its neck, the apparent roundness of the body, and the resemblance of the animal’s head with that of a snake.

In their reports there is not a single estimation of the length of the neck. It is only said that the length of the visible part of the animal was about sixty feet; and now Mr. SEARLES V. WOOD says: “a neck, estimated on that occasion as sixty feet”. I don’t see the reason of such a deduction!

As I have not read the “description of Zeuglodon cetoides” I am not able to discover the reason why it struck Mr. Wood that the animal seen from the Daedalus may have been a descendant of the order to which Zeuglodon belonged.

We observe that Mr. Wood really believes that it was the sea-serpent which attacked “the whale by the long neck, the appearance being confounded into the double coil of a serpent by the distance and motions of the object” (See n^o. 144). I will not contest his opinion!

I do not know what to think of Mr. WOOD, when he speaks of the Kiushiu Maru in connection with a relative of his. I may suppose that his relative had told him she repatriated by the City of Baltimore through the Indian Ocean, and that the “previous voyage” of that vessel was also from India to England; notwithstanding this he cites the account of the Kiushiu Maru reporting the appearance of a sea-serpent near the isle of Kiu Siu (Japan) in the Van Diemen’s Straits. Most probably the City of Baltimore never was there!

In short, the error took place, and Mr. WOOD sees clearly in the figures of the Graphic his Zeuglodon pointing out that this figure shows a bifurcated or fan-shaped tail, and that consequently the animal must be a cetacean! It is evident, that Mr. WOOD was convinced that the Zeuglodon (read Basilosaurus) had the following outlines!

It is clear that, before writing his postscript, he had already had the opportunity to read “a description of Zeuglodon cetoides”. Yet he holds to his idea, and does not show the great difference between the extremely short neck of Basilosaurus and the extraordinarily long neck of the Sea-Serpent. This at all events must have struck him.

At last I am obliged to say some words about his considerations of PONTOPPIDAN’S Natural History of Norway. It is clear that he has not read a single word of it! He says: “it is most likely that the Bishop concocted his two figures from accounts given him by Norwegian seamen”, whilst the Bishop clearly states that the first figure is a copy of a sketch of Mr. BENSTRUP, and the second a copy of the drawing of Mr. BING. Of the latter figure Mr. WOOD says “it is that of a serpent-like animal almost resting on the surface of the sea”. I shall be greatly obliged to any person who can show me a passage either in PONTOPPIDAN’S or in EGEDE’S work, stating that the animal presented itself in this way “resting on the surface”. I refer my readers to the account itself (n^o. 5), where it is clear that the animal must have been seen in this position for only the fraction of a second!

Mr. WOOD, describing the drawing of Mr. BING underlines the words: in a single column, speaking of the animal’s “spouting water or steam from its mouth”. Now I ask my readers (drawing their attention to the fact that the figure represents the animal’s head seen from aside), whether a column, spouted from the animal’s nose or mouth, when seen from aside could ever have been decided to be single or double! If we look at the breath of a horse, standing just on one side of him, it will be observed to be single. This optical illusion will be dispelled as soon as we stand in front of the horse. Bing’s figure would have been incorrect, if he had drawn two columns, though in reality--if the animal exhaled through its nostrils,--the column must have been double.--It is remarkable that Mr. WOOD does not say anything of the great difference between the figure of the Kiushiu Maru (with a cetacean tail) and that of Mr. BING, (with a long and pointed one).--Again, he asserts that both the Bishop’s figures represent only preposterous conceptions of his own description!

Finally he compares the animal seen from the Osborne with a manatee! Surely we must be a Mr. SEARLES V. WOOD JUN. to find this conception not preposterous!

In a second paper in Nature of February 10, 1881, Mr. WOOD quotes the report of the City of Baltimore, and correcting his second error, writes in parentheses “not City of Washington, as I had misunderstood.”--In treating of this report and of the accompanying figure he is again mistaken, for the figure shows the animal moving at a rapid rate with its neck high in the air, and the two splashes were evidently caused by the animal’s fore-flappers and hind-flappers, whilst the splash “like a pair of wings” described in the report, is caused by the dropping of the immense neck like a log of wood in the act of disappearing suddenly in the water. This act, and consequently this splash too, is not represented in the figure! According to his idea of the sea-serpent being a dolphin or porpoise with a very long neck (called by him Zeuglodon), he ascribes the splash, caused by the hind flappers, to his “cetacean tail” of the animal. Remarkable is his third error; for after having first confounded the foremost splash, drawn in the figure, with that described in the report as caused by the dropping of the neck, he now writes: “the foam around the neck may be due to the splash of the humeroid” (i. e. fore) “paddles which a cetacean should possess.”

Mr. WOOD further sees in the figure of the head of the Daedalus animal (fig. 30) the alleged “bulldog appearance of the forehead and eye-brow”. I can only express my opinion that this comparison is far fetched.

Of the report of Captain Cox (n^o. 152) Mr. WOOD says:

“In this account we have almost a duplicate of that of Major Senior in the dropping of the animal with a great splash into the water prior to its darting forward under it; while the boiling of the water around, which is so inconsistent with the motion of a snake in water (which I have more than once seen) evidently resulted from the strokes of the cetacean tail, and possibly also from those of the paddles, as in the case witnessed by Major Senior. The black colour also is described in both cases.”

In treating of this report I have already expressed my opinion that the boiling of the water must have been caused by the four flappers together. It is very natural that Mr. WOOD who represents the sea-serpent as a dolphin-shaped animal, without a backfin, and with a long neck, sets much value on the cetacean tail. Finally he says:

“Judging from the figures which accompany this and my previous letter” (figg. 48, 49, 46, and reduced sketches of figg. 28 and 30), “it appears to me that the external form of the animal must resemble the well-known Plesiosaurus, if we imagine the hinder (femuroid) paddles of that Enaliosaurian to be absent, and a cetacean tail (which is their homologue), to be present in their stead. Since in the direction of the Porpesse the cetacean in external form so closely simulates the fish, so it may in another direction simulate this Mesozoic marine saurian, or the gigantic Elasmosaurus of the American cretaceous formation, of which a nearly perfect skeleton is described by Prof. Cope as forty-five feet in length, the neck constituting twenty-two of this length.”

And he expresses his firm opinion:

“There ought, I submit, to remain no longer with naturalists any doubt that a hitherto unknown group of carnivorous cetaceans, with necks of extraordinary length, inhabit the ocean.”

In the middle of November, 1881, appeared the first number of the Album der Natuur for 1882, and in this issue the author of the present Volume treated of the probability of the existence of the great sea-serpent. Unfortunately he, who at that time was only a student of Natural History at the Utrecht University, really believed the animal of Stronsa, of 1808, to be a sea-serpent, and was misled by the hoax of Captain SEABURY of which he only knew the last part, found by him in the Illustrated London News. In his firm belief, however, he examined such characters, taken from these tales and from nearly 60 reports then known to him, as were possible from a zoological point of view, and came to the conclusion that the sea-serpent must be a mammal, with four flappers, a long neck and a long and pointed tail, and that the position of this marine mammal is between dolphins and pinnipeds. Was there such an animal known? Yes, the Zeuglodon cetoides of Prof. RICHARD OWEN. Well, as the sea-serpent has the outlines of a Plesiosaurus, with an enormous tail, he called it Zeuglodon plesiosauroides. At that time he was the dupe of the Stronsa animal and of the alleged capture of 1852, because, like so many other writers on the subject, he believed that he could solve the difficult question without reading, if not all that had been written about the animal, at least much more than some few reports!

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The =fourteenth= explanation is that of an anonymous writer in one of the public papers of about the sixth of November, 1848. Amidst the excitement, caused by the reports of Capt. M’QUHAE and Lieutenant DRUMMOND, he asks whether or not the animal could be a full grown specimen of =Saccopharynx flagelium= of Dr. MITCHILL or the =Ophiognathus ampullaceus= of HARWOOD. I have only to tell my readers that these two names are given to two different species of the same genus, that the former attains a length of about five, the latter of about six feet, and to give the next figure, in order to enable them to judge themselves, whether such an animal could ever have shown itself in the form of a sea-serpent! They belong to the family of the Muraenidae.

The figure represents the Eurypharynx pelecanoides of VAILLANT, taken from FILHOL’S La vie au fond des mers. GÜNTHER, in his Deepsea-fishes of the Challenger says on p. 262 of Saccopharynx Bairdii (synonym with Saccopharynx flagellum): “It is uncertain whether these specimens are specifically distinct from Saccopharynx pelecanoides VAILLANT.” I therefore don’t hesitate to put before my readers the above figure as a representation of the general outlines of Saccopharynx flagellum.

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The =fifteenth= explanation is suggested by the same anonymous writer on the same occasion, who wishing to explain the appearance of the sea-serpent near the coasts of Africa, asks whether “some land species, as the =boas=, among which are individuals of forty feet in length, may not sometimes betake themselves to the sea, or even transport themselves from one continent to another”.

Probably he “adduced” this suggestion “of a large boa constrictor having been conveyed to the island of St. Vincent, twisted round the trunk of a cedar tree, carried away, as is supposed, from the banks of some South-American river. This occurrence is quoted by Sir Charles Lyell from the Zoological Journal of December, 1827. (Principles of Geology.)”

Mr. GOSSE in his Romance of Natural History after having shown that the sea-serpent cannot be a kind of true sea-snake (Family Hydrophidae) because “none of these are known to extend a few feet in length and, so far as we know, none of them have been found in the Atlantic”, goes on saying: “It is remarkable, however, that a record exists of a serpent having been seen in the very midst of the North Atlantic”. And instead of relating now the historical fact of the boa constrictor, above mentioned, he quotes the report of the sea-serpent seen from the General Coole, (n^o. 25) and goes on saying:

“It augments very considerably the value of this incident, that no suggestion of identity with the Norwegian dragon appears to have occurred to the observer; he speaks of it of “a snake”, and nothing more; the dimensions alone appear to have excited surprise, “sixteen or eighteen feet”, and these are by no means extravagant.”

“On the whole I am disposed to accept this case as that of a true serpent--perhaps the Boa Murina, one of the largest known, and of very aquatic habits--carried out to sea by one of the great South American rivers, and brought by the Gulf Stream to the spot where it was seen. If I am warranted in this conclusion it affords us no help in the identification of the great unknown.”