‘THE GREAT SEA SERPENT.’
THE question of varieties and of constriction brings us to ‘The Great Sea Serpent;’ for, putting all the evidence together, if the creature exist at all he must be a constrictor.
I do not intend to trouble my readers with the detailed history of this great unknown, for his literature would more than exceed the limits of this whole volume. Those who are sufficiently interested in him will find ample reading in most of the encyclopedias, which again refer us to various books in which he has figured from his first supposed appearance in modern times.
Ever and again, when a new ‘sea monster’ has been reported, the newspapers take up the theme, and often give a resumé of its history, from Bishop Pontoppidan’s down to the most recent specimen. References to the most important of the journalistic authorities usually accompany the more detailed accounts; but among them an excellent abridgement of ‘sea serpent’ literature, which appeared in the Illustrated London News of October 1848, is worth studying. Another of interest was in the Echo of January 15, 1877. In Silliman’s Journal of Science, 1835, was also an excellent paper. One of the best digests is that given by P. H. Gosse, in his Romance of Natural History, of the ed. 1860. This author, after weighing all the published evidence both from ordinary and scientific sources, and presenting it in a well-arranged and lucid form, sums up as follows:—
‘In conclusion, I express my own confident persuasion that there exists some oceanic animal of immense proportions, which has not yet been received into the category of scientific zoology; and my strong opinion that it possesses close affinities with the fossil enaliosauria of the lias.’
Having respect for the opinion of so thoughtful a writer, and further encouraged by the fact that some of our most eminent physiologists have not thought it beneath them to give their attention to the various serpentine appearances which from time to time are seen at sea, and that the majority of them believe in the possibility of an unknown marine reptile, let us accept this idea as the basis of an endeavour to lay before my readers another summing up of evidence gathered from the still more recent writings on ‘The Great Sea Serpent’ of modern times.
Those who have honoured this book with attentive perusal thus far, will have become initiated in certain ophidian manners, actions, and appearances which would enable them at once to identify a snake were they to have a complete view of one. But to those who are not familiar with such peculiarities, and possess only a vague idea of the ophidian form, many a merely elongated outline at sea may be, and has been, set down as a ‘serpent,’ which on closer inspection, or by the light of science, has proved something entirely different. Ribbon-fish, strings of porpoises and other cetaceans, long lines of sea-birds on the surface of the waves, even logs of drifting wood or bamboo, with bunches of seaweed doing service as ‘manes’ or ‘fins,’ have in turn, and by the aid of the imagination, been dubbed ‘the sea serpent’ again and again. These may be dismissed by the mere mention of a few such as examples. For instance, in Nature, vol. xviii., 1878, Dr. Dean describes a reported ‘sea serpent,’ which resolved itself into a flight of birds. E. H. Pringle describes the serpentine appearance of a bamboo swaying up and down, which at a distance had deceived the beholders into the idea of the sea serpent; others explained that long lines of birds or of sea-weeds had again similarly deceived sailors. In Land and Water, Sept. 22, 1877, we read that the crew of the barque Aberfoyle, off the coast of Scotland, thought they really had got one this time, and approaching the ‘monster,’ lowered and manned a boat, and seized a harpoon to ‘catch’ the singularly passive creature, which proved to be a mass of ‘a sort of jelly-fish description,’ some of which they bottled and corked down air-tight; but, alas! it ‘deliquesced’!
Again, in Nature, Feb. 10, 1881, an imaginary sea serpent seen from the City of Baltimore (a ship in which the present writer crossed the Atlantic, though unfortunately not on that voyage) was pronounced to be a species of whale, the Zeuglodontia.
One more out of scores of similar reports, which go to show that if some unknown marine animal of a longish form is caught, those who have anything to do with it immediately label it ‘the sea serpent.’ In Land and Water, Aug. 24, 1878, Mr. Frank Buckland published a communication from an Australian correspondent, regarding a ‘most remarkable fish,’ of nearly fifteen feet long, and eight inches in diameter at the thickest part. It has ‘no scales,’ but ‘a skin like polished silver,’ is of a tapering form, has a very queer mouth, a ‘mane’ on the neck, and ‘two feelers under the chin, thirty-two inches long.’ And this unsnake-like thing was taken to the Mechanics’ Institute of that town, and unhesitatingly. labelled ‘Sea Serpent!’ Dr. Buckland suggested that it was a ribbon fish.
Thus, we may repeat that it is almost impossible for an unscientific person even to see, far less to describe, unfamiliar living forms in a manner that would prove sound data for zoologists to decide upon.