“Yet lots of people claim to have seen sea-serpents,” protested Perry.
“Plenty of them. But no one has ever made a photograph of one, nor has a single specimen of one ever been put into a Museum,” remarked the professor.
“Do you think they were all fake—I mean mistakes?” corrected the boy, hastily.
“Not at all,” was the reply. “Some of them were hoaxes, of course. But I’m not the man to believe that other people are lying because I don’t happen to agree with them. It’s easy to make errors in a subject on which you’re not an expert—and few of the people who have claimed to have seen sea-serpents were expert naturalists. Now, if a sea-serpent presented himself for examination to a scientific expedition, such as the Challenger, or the Michael Sars, it would be a different matter. That has never happened.”
Combat Between Ichthyosaurus and Plesiosaurus.
One of the most famous of the early restorations. Modern discovery has shown that the long neck of the Plesiosaurus was almost stiff, and that the Ichthyosaurus had not a whale-like spout. The latter also bore a triangular shark-like fin on the back.
“But you think the people who reported a sea-serpent saw something?”
“I’m sure of it,” was the scientist’s instant reply. “The very difference in all the reports shows that.”
“What do you suppose they saw?”