"The sea saurians of the secondary periods of geology have been replaced in the tertiary and actual seas by marine mammals. No remains of Cetacea have been found in lias or oolite, and no remains of Plesiosaur, or Ichthyosaur, or any other secondary reptile, have been found in Eocene or later tertiary deposits, or recent, on the actual sea-shores; and that the old air-breathing saurians floated when they died, has been shown in the Geological Transactions,' (vol. v., second series, p. 512.) The inference that may reasonably be drawn from no recent carcass, or fragment of such, having ever been discovered, is strengthened by the corresponding absence of any trace of their remains in the tertiary beds.

66

"ca

exhibited by Mr. Koch, in New York and Boston, | to the good name of the other. Let the as those of the great sea-serpent, and which are sceptic visit Norway, and he will come back now in Berlin, belonged to different individuals of a firm believer in the sea-serpent! but let a species which I had previously proved to be an extinct whale, a determination which has subse-him visit a locality said to be haunted by a quently been confirmed by Professors Müller and ghost, and it is ten to one but he will disAgassiz. Mr. Dixon, of Worthing, has discov- cover a policeman in the pantry or the serered many fossil vertebræ in the Eocene tertiary vants' bed-room. In another instance, we clay at Bracklesham, which belong to a large think the learned Professor reckons without species of an extinct genus of serpent (Palco his host; he assumes that mariners, because phis), founded on similar vertebræ from the same non-naturalists, do not know a seal when formation in the Isle of Sheppey. The largest of This is a manifest error; the these ancient British snakes was twenty feet in they see one. length; but there is no evidence that they were men who see sea-serpents are familiar with marine. seals, and, as we have already said, are not likely to make such mistakes. Again, the learned Professor gives the creature a pacious, vaulted cranium," thus making it like a seal. This also is a manifest error; the head was remarkably flat-so remarkably flat, that the eye-witnesses dwell on this character (without knowing its tendency) as one worthy of especial notice; and the error here is so extraordinary, that we have thought it desirable to avail ourselves of the liberality of the proprietors of the "Illustrated Londrawings of the animal to which the Prodon News" to republish one of the very fessor alludes, as having appeared in that journal. Let our readers turn to any work on zoology in which seals are figured, and compare the likeness. Again, the learned the supposed sea-serpent; because a seaProfessor wants to fix an ophidian nature on serpent it must be a serpent: this is also a manifest error. A sea-mouse is not a mouse, a sea-urchin is not an urchin, a sea-horse is not a horse, a sea-lion is not a lion, and so on in every instance where the word sea is used as a prefix. Has Professor Owen yet to learn, and must we have the pleasure of teaching him, that the term sea-mouse is given to a certain animal residing in the sea, because of a real or fanciful resemblance to a mouse, but which has no kind of anatomical affinity to the Glires? The same, again, with the urchins: the Professor might diligently hunt all the museums in the universe without success, for the vertebræ of marine mice and marine hedghogs, and thence he might as logically conclude that sea-mice and sea-urchins are as fabulous as ghosts. In fine, we do not find a single passage in the Professor's epistle that will bear the scrutiny of an inquirer after truth. But we must hear the captain's reply.

Now, on weighing the question, whether creatures meriting the name of great sea-serpent' do exist, or whether any of the gigantic marine saurians of the secondary deposits may have continued to live up to the present time, it seems to me less probable that no part of the carcass of such reptiles should have ever been discovered in a recent or unfossilized state, than that men should have been deceived by a cursory view of a partly submerged and rapidly moving animal, which might only be strange to themselves. In other words, I regard the negative evidence, from the utter absence of any of the recent remains of great sea-serpents, krakens, or Enaliosauria, as stronger against their actual existence than the positive statements which have hitherto weighed with the public mind in favor of their existence. A larger body of evidence, from eye-witnesses, might be got together in proof of ghosts than of the sea-serpent. RICHARD OWEN, Lincoln's Inn Fields, November 9, 1848."-From the Times.

Now, we are willing to admit that this is a pleasant and plausible piece of writing, and extremely well calculated to answer the author's purpose, which is to make the world believe that the existence of the sea-serpent is as improbable as the existence of ghost. We do not wish to hurt the feelings of ghostseers by expressing an opinion as to these nocturnal gentry; but there is one essential difference between a ghost and the sea-serpent, and it is this: that rigid investigation is constantly damaging the reputation of the one, while it evidently and confessedly adds

"Professor Owen correctly states, that I ‘evidently saw a large creature moving rapidly through the water very different from anything I had ever before witnessed, neither a whale, a

essentially from any living animal described in our systematic works.' To this animal, mariners have given the very appropriate name of sea-serpent, from its inhabiting the sea, and from its supposed resemblance to a serpent. It is fifty or sixty feet in length

grampus, a great shark, an alligator, nor any of the larger surface-swimming creatures fallen in with in ordinary voyages.' I now asssert-neither was it a common seal nor a sea-elephant, its great length and its totally differing physiognomy precluding the possibility of its being a Phoca' of any species. The head was flat, and not a capacious vaulted cranium; nor had it a stiff-perhaps seventy feet-but we may gather inflexible trunk'-a conclusion to which Professor Owen has jumped, most certainly not justified by the simple statement, that no portion of the sixty feet seen by us was used in propelling it through the water, either by vertical or horizontal undulation.'

"It is also assumed that the calculuation of its length was made under a strong preconception of the nature of the beast;' another conclusion quite the contrary to the fact. It was not until after the great length was developed by its nearest approach to the ship, and until after that most important point had been duly considered and debated, as well as such could be in the brief space of time allowed for so doing, that it was pronounced to be a serpent by all who saw it, and who are too well accustomed to judge of lengths and breadths of objects in the sea to mistake a real substance and an actual living body, coolly and dispassionately contemplated, at so short a distance too, for the eddy caused by the action of the deeper immersed fins and tail of a rapidly moving gigantic seal raising its head above the surface of the water,' as Professor Owen imagines, in quest of its lost iceberg.

from the multitude of statements that fifty or sixty is a perfectly safe estimate; it is long in proportion to its bulk, its neck and tail being of much less circumference than its body; the junction of the tail and body is marked by a rapid diminution in size; it has a sharp-pointed snout, flat-topped head, powerful teeth, very large eyes, and blowholes, like the Cetacea, from which it spouts water; it has two very large and powerful flappers, or paddles, with which it makes its way when on the surface of the water; it has a dorsal, or cervical crest-fin or mane; its skin is smooth.

We think it will readily be admitted that no animal answering such a description is known in our methodical arrangements; nay, we very much doubt whether it would not be considered as altogether disturbing these arrangements; geology, however, offers something approaching a solution. In the splendid work of Mr. Hawkins on the "Extinct Monsters of the Ancient Earth," we find the delineation of forms quite as remarkable as that which we have attempted to describe from attested depositions. Concerning one of them, Dr. Mantell writes:

"The creative powers of the human mind may be very limited. On this occasion they were not called into requisition, my purpose and desire being, throughout, to furnish eminent naturalists, such as the learned Professor, with accurate facts, and not with exaggerated representations, nor with what could, by any possibility, proceed from optical illusion; and I beg to assure him "The Ichthyosaurus had the back of a porthat old Pontoppidan having clothed his sea-ser-poise, the teeth of a crocodile, the head and sterpent with a mane could not have suggested the idea of ornamenting the creature seen from the Dædalus with a similar appendage, for the simple reason that I had never seen his account, or even heard of his sea-serpent until my arrival in London. Some other solution must, therefore, be found for the very remarkable coincidence between us in that particular, in order to unravel the mystery.

"Finally, I deny the existence of excitement or the possibility of optical illusion. I adhere to the statements as to form, color, and dimensions, contained in my official report to the Admiralty, and I leave them as data whereupon the learned and scientific may exercise the 'pleasures of imagination' until some more fortunate opportunity shall occur of making a closer acquaintance with the great unknown'-in the present instance, most assuredly no ghost. P. MQUHE, late Captain of Her Majesty's ship Dædalus."-Times, November 21, 1848.

To ourselves the evidence appears irresistible, "that a certain marine animal of enormous size does exist, and that it differs

num of a lizard, the paddles of Cetacea, and the vertebræ of fish. Some of the species attain the magnitude of young whales. The orbit is very large.

Like turtles, the

animal had four paddles, composed of numerous
bones enveloped in one fold of integument, so as
to appear an entire fin, as in the Cetacea. The
fore-paddles are large, and, in some species, are
formed of one hundred bones; the hind are
smaller, and contain but thirty or forty.
The nostrils, as in the Cetacea, beneath the or-
bits.
Its skin appears not to have
been covered with scales."- Wonders of Geology,
ii. 434.

Here is the description of another animal:

"The Plesiosaurus differs from the Ichthyosaurus in the extreme smallness of the head, and enormous length of the neck. The latter is composed of upwards of thirty vertebræ-a number far exceeding that of the cervical vertebræ in any known animal. This reptile combines in its structure the head of a lizard with teeth like those of a crocodile, a neck resembling the body of a

serpent, a trunk and tail of the proportions of | those of a quadruped, and paddles like those of turtles. It has been compared to a serpent threaded through the body of a turtle."—Id. 435.

Another animal in many points resembling them, but now generally referred to the Cetacea, is described by Dr. Harlan, and probably equalled the largest whale in size. The bones of this creature were exhibited in America as those of a fossil sea-serpent. This, we believe, was the act of a mere puffing exhibitor; and the bones are said to have been arranged without any kind of anatomical

accuracy.

The descriptions of these animals, written simply as scientific records, are quite sufficient to convince the reflecting mind that, at one period of this earth's existence, its seas were teeming with creatures which, if admitted into our recent fauna, would solve the problem at once. If the Ichthyosauri, Plesiosauri, Basilosauri, and cognate or intermediate genera, were still recognized as inhabitants of the North Atlantic Ocean, no one would be disposed to contest the point that one or other of the tribe had been seen at different periods and places, and had been intended by the descriptions we have quoted; but to suppose such beings now existent, is said to be a violation of geological law. Here, however, we will quote an author of high repute-no other than the venerable and universally respected Kirby-to show that the geological law is not accepted without question:

"It has been calculated that the depth of the sea in any part does not exceed thirty thousand feet, or a little more than five miles. This, compared with the diameter of our globe, about eight thousand miles, may be regarded as nothing. What a vast space then, supposing it really hollow, may be contained in its womb, not only for an abundant reservoir of water, but for sources of the volcanic action which occasionally manifests itself in various parts, both of the ocean and terra firma! Reasoning from analogy, and from that part of the globe which falls under our inspection, it will appear not improbable that this vast space should not be altogether destitute of its peculiar inhabitants. We know that there are numerous animals on the surface of the globe that conceal themselves in various places in the daytime, and only make their appearance in the night. It would, therefore, be perfectly consistent with the general course of God's proceedings, and in exact harmony with the general features of creation, that he should have peopled the abyss with creatures fitted, by their organization and structure, to live there; and it would not be wonderful that some of the saurian race, especially the marine ones, should have their station in the subterranean

[June,

waters, which would sufficiently account for their never having been seen except in a fossil state." Kirby's Bridgewater Treatise, i, 33.

Plesiosaurus, Ichthyosaurus, and their conThe author confessedly alludes to the geners, expressing a belief that the huge membrane, enabled these creatures to see in eyes of Ichthyosaurus, with their nictitant the dark. We merely mention Mr. Kirby's hypothesis, to show that one at least of the élite of science holds that marine saurians still exist in a centromundane metropolis of reptiles; our conclusions would rather pheric air, which they certainly breathe. We place these creatures nearer to the atmoslungs to have his residence four thousand can scarcely imagine a beast with genuine miles away from any element that he could respire. And again, our experience in moles, and such like workers underground, is not in favor of their possessing such prodigious eyes. But what geological law is violated by Kirby's hypothesis, or by our author's? Who shall say that a tribe of animals is extinct?* Does not the crocodile occur in the wealden, cheek-by-jole with the Plesiosaunot the elephant both fossil and recent ?-is rus? and do not crocodiles still exist? Is not the hyæna fossil and recent ?-do not insects, scarcely distinguishable from our have seen the impressions of the wings of own, exist in the secondary series? We dragon-flies that would defy the scrutiny of an entomologist to distinguish them from those of recent genera. Hence we infer, that although certain species, now found in a fossil state, may perhaps no longer exist in a recent state, yet there is no law of nature, no analogical reasoning, which should forbid the existence of their congeners. Although we may not, perhaps, have the identical species of Plesiosaurus discovered by Miss Anning, and described by Mr. Conybeare, yet there is nothing to forbid the existence of a cognate species! So that it is perfectly consistent with the profoundest discoveries of the geologist to imagine the Enaliosaurians existing in their pristine glory. All that geology would require is, that the Norwegian species should not be identical with those of the lias or the wealden.

Since the foregoing observations were in type, we *This question seems likely to be set at rest. of the "Zoologist" for January, (No. 73,) in which is have been favored with a sight of the proof-sheets living Enaliosaurians, of immense size, in the Gulf an authenticated announcement of the discovery of of California.

From Tait's Magazine.

THE BIRTH OF DAY.

From Fraser's Magazine.

LETTER OF ADVICE FROM AN EXPERIENCED MATRON TO A YOUNG MARRIED LADY.