‘It may be argued that if such animals still live, they must from time to time die, and their bodies would float, and their carcases would be found, or parts of them would wash on shore. To this I say: however reasonable such arguments may appear, most animals that die or are killed in the water, sink at first to the bottom, where they are likely to have the flesh and soft parts devoured by other animals, such as crustacea, fishes, etc. etc., and sinking in the deep, the bones, being heavier than the other parts, may soon become imbedded, and thus concealed from sight.’
It was gratifying to me to find my own ideas of hibernation thus supported, the above allusion to the probability of temporary repose in marine reptiles being the first I had met with.
Mr. Henry Lee, in the same issue, reminds us that the existence of gigantic cuttle-fish was popularly disbelieved until within the past five or six years, during which period several specimens—some of them fifty feet in total length—have been taken, and all doubts upon the subject have been removed. He argues, also, that during the deep-sea dredgings of H.M. ships Lightning, Porcupine, and Challenger, many new species of mollusca, supposed to have been extinct ever since the Chalk epoch, were brought to light, and that there were brought up by the deep-sea trawlings from great depths fishes of unknown species, which could not exist near the surface owing to the distension and rupture of their air-bladder when removed from the pressure of deep water.
Forcibly suggestive are such facts of still further undiscovered denizens of the deep! And as to what they are, fish, mammal, or reptile, or a compound of either two or all three of these, why doubt any possibility when we know that on land are similarly complicated organisms which so lately have perplexed our most able physiologists? Take, for example, that curious anomaly, the mud-fish of the Gambia, Lepidosiren, referred to in the last chapter, and which, to look at, is as much like a lizard as a fish, with its four singular appendages where either legs or fins might be. Again, we have that paradox in nature—bird, reptile, and quadruped combined—in the Australian Platypus, a semi-aquatic animal. ‘These two fresh-water animals are,’ says Darwin, ‘among the most anomalous forms now found in the world; and like fossils, they connect, to a certain extent, orders at present widely sundered in the natural scale.’[76] Other equally remarkable links between the various groups might be cited to prepare us for any marine anomalies which may hereafter surprise us. Taking into consideration, also, that many of our smaller aquatic animals have their representatives on a huge scale in the ocean, why should there not be gigantic ophidian forms to correspond with the terrestrial pythons and anacondas? As in point of size salt-water fishes exceed those of our rivers, and as the enormous marine mammalia exceed those on land, we might the rather wonder if there were not one ‘great sea serpent,’ but many unsuspected species of reptiles, compound ophiosaurians, or saurophidians, or who shall say what, in those inaccessible depths.
‘How is it none have ever been captured?’ it is asked. In reply, Has any one ever captured a swiftly-retreating land snake escaping pursuit? Who can overtake or circumvent it when in its tropical vigour? And how vastly must the powers and swiftness of those immense pelagians exceed the kinds with which we are familiar! ‘Then, Why have no bones been found?’ Mr. Bartlett’s reason is one of those assigned, and in addition I may suggest that the love of locality, so strong in land reptiles, may also exist in marine ones, which probably retire to the recesses of their submarine habitats to die.
‘How is it none have ever been killed?’ Well! A cannon ball on the instant, and not much less, would be required to ‘kill it on the spot,’ as some have sagely recommended.
Mr. Henry Lee, among others, does not regard capture as impossible and in support of my own speculations—more correctly speaking imagination, perhaps—I give the concluding words of his paper:—
‘I therefore think it by no means impossible—first, that there may be gigantic marine animals unknown to science having their ordinary habitat in the great depths of the sea, only occasionally coming to the surface, and perhaps avoiding habitually the light of day; and, second, that there may still exist, though supposed to have been long extinct, some of the old sea reptiles whose fossil remains tell of their magnitude and habits, or others of species unknown even to palæontologists.
‘The evidence is, to my mind, conclusive that enormous animals, with which zoologists are at present unacquainted, exist in the “great and wide sea,” and I look forward hopefully to the capture of one or more of them, and the settlement of this vexed question.’
I cannot conclude this chapter without further reference to one other of our very popular physiologists, Dr. Andrew Wilson. The week following that in which Owen, Captain Gray, and Messrs. Lee, Buckland, and Bartlett contributed their opinions to Land and Water, September 8, 1877, Dr. Wilson also favoured its readers with two closely written pages on ‘The Sea Serpent of Science.’ Some of his introductory words have been already quoted. He then presents the claims to attention which these various ‘sea monsters’ offer, as reported by thoroughly trustworthy witnesses, suggesting that the idea of a ‘serpent’ is too restricted.