Again, a power of constriction, a characteristic of boas and pythons, and therefore implying an alliance with them, is not necessarily indicated, as might be supposed, even by the action affirmed in Captain Drevar’s story; for a creature of serpentine form, attacking another, might coil itself round for the mere purpose of maintaining a hold while it tore its victim open with its powerful jaws and teeth. This action is simply that of an eel which, on being hooked, grasps weeds at the bottom to resist capture.
Nor are we bound to accept in any way the captain’s suggestion that the monster gorged its victim after the fashion of a land-serpent. It may as readily have torn it open and fed on it as an eel might; and it is, indeed, not unreasonable to suppose that so powerful a monster would find its prey among large creatures, such as seals, porpoises, and the smaller cetaceæ.
That the sea-serpent was formerly more frequently seen on the Norwegian coasts than now I consider probable, as also that its visits were connected with its breeding season, and discontinued in consequence of the greater number and larger size of vessels, and especially of the introduction of steam. As a parallel instance, I may mention that, in the early days of the settlement of Australia, sperm whales resorted to the harbours along its coasts for calving purposes, and were sufficiently numerous to cause the maintenance of what were called “bay whaling stations” at Hobart Town, Spring Bay, and many other harbours of Tasmania and South Australia. At the present time, the sperm whale rarely approaches within ten miles of the coast, and the small whaling fleet finds scanty occupation in the ocean extending south from the great Australian bight to the south cape of Tasmania. Mr. Gosse eliminates from his concluding analysis of sea-serpent stories all those recorded by Norwegian and American observers, and argues only upon a selected number resting on British evidence.
By this contraction he loses as a basis of argument a number of accounts which I consider as credible as those he quotes, and from which positive deductions might be drawn, more weighty than those of similar, but merely inferential, character which he employs.
The account of the monster seen by Hans Egede, for example, where the creature exhibited itself more completely than it did in any of the instances selected by Mr. Gosse, specifically indicated the possession of paws, flippers, fins or paddles, while this can only be surmised at, in the latter cases to which I refer, from the progressive steady motion of the creature, with the head and neck elevated above the surface, and apparently unaffected by any undulatory motion of the body. This at once removes it from the serpent class, without any necessity for the additional confirmation which the enlarged proportions of the body in comparison with those of the neck, as given in Egede’s amended version, afford us.
The creature seen in the Straits of Malacca, and one quoted by Mr. Newman, in the Zoologist, exhibit characters which confirm Egede’s story. In the latter instance, “Captain the Hon. George Hope states that, when in H.M.S. Fly, in the Gulf of California, the sea being perfectly calm and transparent, he saw at the moment a large marine animal, with the head and general figure of an alligator, except that the neck was much longer, and that instead of legs the creature had four large flappers, somewhat like those of turtles, the anterior pair being larger than those of the posterior. The creature was distinctly visible, and all its movements could be observed with ease. It appeared to be pursuing its prey at the bottom of the sea. Its movements were somewhat serpentine, and an appearance of annulations or ring-like divisions of the body were distinctly perceptible.” Mr. Gosse, commenting on this story, says: “Now, unless this officer was egregiously deceived, he saw an animal which could have been no other than an Enaliosaur, a marine reptile of large size, of sauroid figure, with turtle-like paddles.”
In the former case the creature was far more gigantic and robust, in contradistinction to the slender and serpentine form more usually observed, and we must consequently infer that there is not merely one but several distinct species of marine monster, unknown and rarely exhibiting themselves, belonging to different genera, and perhaps orders, but all popularly included under the title of “sea-serpent.”
The attempt to classify these presents difficulties. Mr. Gosse, however, has very ably reviewed the somewhat scanty materials at his command, and, agreeing with the suggestion made originally by Mr. Newman, has elaborated the argument that one of the old Enaliosaurs exists to the present day. This form, Palæontology tells us, commenced in the Carboniferous, attained its maximum specific development in the Jurassic, and continued to the close of the Cretaceous periods. This rational suggestion is supported by the collateral argument that some few Ganoid fishes and species of Terebratula, have continuously existed to the present time; that certain Placoid fishes, of which we have no trace, and which consequently must have been very scarce during Tertiary periods, reappear abundantly as recent species; that the Iguanodon is represented by the Iguana of the American tropics, and that the Trionychidæ, or river tortoises, which commenced during the Wealden, and disappeared from thence until the present period, are now abundantly represented in the rivers of the Old and the New World.
The points of resemblance between the northern and most often seen form of the sea-serpent and certain genera of the Enaliosaurs, such as Plesiosaurus, are a long swan-like neck, a flattened lizard-like head and progress by means of paddles. A difficulty in this connection arises, however, in respect to the breathing apparatus. Palæontologists favour the idea that the Plesiosaurus and its allies were air-breathing creatures with long necks, adapted to habitual projection above the surface. Such a construction and habit is, as I have before said, to my mind, impossible in the case of an animal of so scarce an appearance as the sea-serpent; and I am incapable of estimating how far the theory is inflexible in regard to the old forms that I have mentioned. May there not be some large marine form combining some of the characters of the salamander and the saurians; may not the pigmy newt of Europe, the large salamander tenanting the depths of Lake Biwa in Japan, and the famous fossil form, the Homo Diluvii Testis of Sheuzberg, have a marine cousin linking them with the gigantic forms which battled in the Oolitic seas? May not the tuft of loose skin or scroll encircling its head have some connection with a branchial apparatus analagous to that of the Amphibia; and was not the large fringe round the neck, like a beard, noticed on the one seen by Captain Anderson when in the Delta in 1861, of a similar nature?
In conclusion, I must strongly express my own conviction, which I hope, after the perusal of the evidence contained in the foregoing pages, will be shared by my readers, that, let the relations of the sea-serpent be what they may; let it be serpent, saurian, or fish, or some form intermediate to them; and even granting that those relations may never be determined, or only at some very distant date; yet, nevertheless, the creature must now be removed from the regions of myth, and credited with having a real existence, and that its name includes not one only, but probably several very distinct gigantic species, allied more or less closely, and constructed to dwell in the depths of the ocean, and which only occasionally exhibit themselves to a fortune-favoured wonder-gazing crew.