That there is some mighty denizen of the vasty deep, sometimes but seldom seen, is more than possible, and highly probable; but to which of the recognised classes of created being can this huge rover of the ocean be referred? First of all, is it an animal at all? On two occasions monstrous pieces of weed have been mistaken for the Kraken, but on each occasion the distance from the vessel is estimated at half a mile; while Captain M‘Quhæ says that he was within 200 yards, and Mr. Davidson within thirty-five yards of the animal. Under these circumstances we may fairly dismiss the sea-weed hypothesis.
Professor Owen would place the sea-serpent among the mammalia, but Phoca proboscidea is the only seal which will bear comparison with the Dædalus animal in dimensions, it reaching from twenty to thirty feet. The officers declare, however, that at least sixty feet of their animal was visible at the surface. Again, the fore paws of the seal are placed at about one-third of the total length from the muzzle, and yet no appearance of fins was seen. To continue, the great Phoca proboscidea has no mane, the only seals possessing what may be dignified with the title being the two kinds of sea lions—the Otaria jubata and Platyrhynchus leoninus—which are far too small to come into the count.
It is quite possible that the great unknown is a reptile, and his marine habits present no difficulty. In the Indian and Pacific Oceans there are numerous specimens of true snakes (Hydrophidæ), which are exclusively inhabitants of the sea. None of these, however, are known to exceed a few feet in length, and none of them, so far as is known, have found their way into the Atlantic.
The most probable solution of the riddle is the hypothesis of Mr. Morriss Stirling and Professor Agassiz, that the so-called sea-serpent will find its closest affinities with those extraordinary animals the Enaliosauria, or marine lizards, whose fossil skeletons are found so abundantly through the Oolite and the Lias. If the Plesiosaur could be seen alive you would find nearly its total length on the face of the water propelled at a rapid rate, without any undulation, by an apparatus altogether invisible—the powerful paddles beneath—while the entire serpentine neck would probably be projected obliquely, carrying the reptilian head, with an eye of moderate aperture, and a mouth whose gape did not extend behind the eye. Add to this a body of leathery skin like that of the whale, give the creature a length [pg 190]of some sixty feet or more, and you would have before you almost the very counterpart of the apparition that wrought such amazement on board the Dædalus.
In evidence of the existence of such an animal, Captain the Hon. George Hope states that when in H.M.S. Fly, in the Gulf of California, the sea being perfectly smooth and clear, he saw at the bottom 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 animal had four large flappers, something like those of turtles.
The two strong objections to this theory are—first, the hypothetical improbability of such forms having been transmitted from the era of the secondary strata to the present time; and, second, the entire absence of any parts of the carcases or unfossilised skeletons of such animals in museums. Many fossil types, however, of marine animals have been transmitted, with or without interruption, from remote geological epochs to the present time; among these may be mentioned the Port Jackson Shark (Cestracion), and the gar-pike (Lepidosteus), which have come down to us without interruption, the Chimæra percopsis of Lake Superior, and soft-shelled tortoises (Trionychidæ), with more or less apparent disappearance. The non-occurrence of dead animals is of little weight as disproving the existence of the sea-serpent; its carcase would float only a short time, and the rock-bound coasts of Norway would be very unlikely to retain any fragment cast up by the waves; many whales being known to naturalists only from two or three specimens in many centuries.
The conclusion of the best naturalists is that the existence of the sea-serpent is possibly a verity, and that it may prove to be some modified type of the secondary Enaliosaurians, or possibly some intermediate form between them and the elongated Cetaceans.