The similarity of such an animal to the Plesiosaurus of old was remarkable. That curious compound reptile, which has been compared with "a snake threaded through the body of a turtle," is described by Dean Buckland, in his Bridgewater Treatise, as having "the head of a lizard, the teeth of a crocodile, a neck of enormous length resembling the body of a serpent, the ribs of a chameleon, and the paddles of a whale." In the number of its cervical vertebræ (about thirty-three) it surpasses that of the longest-necked bird, the swan.
The form and probable movements of this ancient saurian agree so markedly with some of the accounts given of the "great sea-serpent," that Mr. Edward Newman advanced the opinion that the closest affinities of the latter would be found to be with the Enaliosauria, or marine lizards, whose fossil remains are so abundant in the oolite and the lias. This view has also been taken by other writers, and emphatically by Mr. Gosse. Neither he nor Mr. Newman insist that the "great unknown" must be the Plesiosaurus itself. Mr. Gosse says, "I should not look for any species, scarcely even any genus, to be perpetuated from the oolitic period to the present. Admitting the actual continuation of the order Enaliosauria, it would be, I think, quite in conformity with general analogy to find some salient features of several extinct forms."
The form and habits of the recently-recognized gigantic cuttles account for so many appearances which, without knowledge of them, were inexplicable when Mr. Gosse and Mr. Newman wrote, that I think this theory is not now forced upon us. Mr. Gosse well and clearly sums up the evidence as follows: "Carefully comparing the independent narratives of English witnesses of known character and position, most of them being officers under the crown, we have a creature possessing the following characteristics: 1st. The general form of a serpent. 2nd. Great length, say above sixty feet. 3rd. Head considered to resemble that of a serpent. 4th. Neck from twelve to sixteen inches in diameter. 5th. Appendages on the head, neck, or back, resembling a crest or mane. (Considerable discrepancy in details.) 6th. Colour dark brown, or green, streaked or spotted with white. 7th. Swims at surface of the water with a rapid or slow movement, the head and neck projected and elevated above the surface. 8th. Progression, steady and uniform; the body straight, but capable of being thrown into convolutions. 9th. Spouts in the manner of a whale. 10th. Like a long nun-buoy." He concludes with the question—"To which of the recognized classes of created beings can this huge rover of the ocean be referred?"
I reply: "To the Cephalopoda. There is not one of the above judiciously summarized characteristics that is not supplied by the great calamary, and its ascertained habits and peculiar mode of locomotion.
"Only a geologist can fully appreciate how enormously the balance of probability is contrary to the supposition that any of the gigantic marine saurians of the secondary deposits should have continued to live up to the present time. And yet I am bound to say, that this does not amount to an impossibility, for the evidence against it is entirely negative. Nor is the conjecture that there may be in existence some congeners of these great reptiles inconsistent with zoological science. Dr. J. E. Gray, late of the British Museum, a strict zoologist, is cited by Mr. Gosse as having long ago expressed his opinion that some undescribed form exists which is intermediate between the tortoises and the serpents."[ [33] ]
Professor Agassiz, too, is adduced by a correspondent of the Zoologist (p. 2395), as having said concerning the present existence of the Enaliosaurian type that "it would be in precise conformity with analogy that such an animal should exist in the American Seas, as he had found numerous instances in which the fossil forms of the Old World were represented by living types in the New."
On this point, Mr. Newman records, in the Zoologist (p. 2356), an actual testimony which he considers, "in all respects, the most interesting natural-history fact of the present century." He writes: