THE SEA SERPENT.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VI, Issue 26, 28 June 1890, Page 3

THE SEA SERPENT.

\ the following paragraph, taken from the Mel- • bourne Standard, and another published in the it would seem that our old friend, the SjßSk great sea-serpent, still apparently revisits the glimpses of the moon. This time it is in the Southern Hemisphere, where he has apparently ~ taken up his winter quarters, ami is enjoying a change of air or water, as the case may Im? : Captain Thos. W. Lockyer, of the steamer Victorian, which arrived on June 2nd from Sydney, reports that yesterday afternoon. while the sea was as smooth as the proverbial mill-]*ond. he saw a monster a short distance away from the ship, which had all the appearance of the long-sought for sea serpent. The monster was about 80ft. in length and 6ft. in circumference in its thickest part, and it was jet-black from end to end. In shape it was like the monsters often described as sea serpents. All the saloon passengers were on deck at the time ami witnessed the gambols of the decidedly unprepossessing stranger, and had no wish to make a closer acquaintance with it. Captain Lockyer adds that he and the passengers on the steamer Adelaide, of which he then had command, saw the same or a similar monster two years ago. SO miles further south than the one which turned up so unexpectedly yesterday. Allusions to the great sea-serpent have of late years be-

come in some sense proverbial in their nature. Its existence has been treated as mythical, and all reports of it regarded as veracious as are travellers' tales or the thumping yarns shot forth upon an effete Europe with other novelties bv the exuberant intellect of the Great West. Indeed, although there is an Arabian legend of such a serpent (which appears clearly to have been a ‘ waterspout’), and there were vague traditions of such a creature current among the maritime population along the littoral of Europe during the middle ages, the most apparently circumstantial accounts of the monster have come from the North Atlantic Sea between the coasts of the United States of America and Scandinavia.

It was a common subject with the early Norse writers, an.! was described ‘ as 200 feet long and 20 feet round, and eating not only ealves, sheep and swine, but also disturbs ships, rising up like a mast ami sometimes snaps some of the men from the deck.’ The Norse historian having thus exhausted himself and laid his imagination to rest, the ball was then taken up by the American skippers, who, pursuing the subject with the usual national fervour, 1 went many better ones ’ over the true and exact accounts of their Scandinavian predecessors. But joking apart, there does seem sufficient ground for supposing that some such creature may exist. At all events a peculiar phenomenon suggesting the presence of a serpent has presented itself at sea repeatedly—chiefly in Atlantic waters — to the eyes of rational and truthful witnesses. It has been explained by several theories. Four of these are that the spectators were the victims of an optical illusion. They either saw a number of porpoises swimming in a line, or a string of Hying sea-fowl, or two basking sharks proceeding in Indian tile, or a ribbon-tish floating on the surface of the water. Scarcely one of these hypotheses is tenable. There are, however, two others possessing a greater amount of probability. In the North Atlantic seas gigantic cephalopods, or squids, are not unfrequently seen, sometimes attaining to sixty feet in length. They are a sort of huge octopus with gigantic tentacles in front, and a set behind with an enormous blow-pi,>e or siphon by means of which hey pi opel themselves. The great sea-seqient may have

been one of these. The last theory is that it may have been a surviving specimen of a fossil race of saurians or amphibious creatures, something between a serj>ent, an alligator, ami a turtle. The following is a speculation by Conybeare regarding the probable appearance and habits of the plesiosaur : —’That it was an aquatic, is evident from the form of its paddles ; that it was marine, is almost equally so, from the remains with which it is universally associated ; that it may have occasionally visited the shore, the resemblance of its extremities to those of the turtle may lead us to conjecture : its motion must have, however, been very awkward on land ; its long neck must have impelled its progress through the water, presenting a striking contrast to the organization which so admirably fits the ichthyosaur to cut through the waves. May it not, therefore, be concluded—since, in addition to these circumstances, its respiration must have required frequent access to the air—that it swam uj>on or near the surface, arching back its long neck like the swan, and occasionally darting it down at the fish which happened to float within’its reach ? It may perhaps have lurked in shoal-water along the coast, concealed among the sea-weed, and, raising its nostrils to the surface from a considerable depth, may have found a secure retreat from the assaults of dangerous enemies ; while the length and flexibility of its neck may have compensated for the want of strength in its jaws, anil its incapacity for swift motion through the water, by the suddenness anil agility of the attack which they enabled it to make on every animal fitted for its prey which came within its reach.’

Ages ago, when the sea and land were quite unlike anything they are now, and man was not, there were races of creatures ashore and atloat bearing little or no resemblance to those we see at present. In the shallow water and around the lagoons and island reefs or at the mouth of rivers there roamed enormous lizard-like monsters with other kinds reaching to the dimensions of whales. But of the plesiosaurus there were many varieties, ami though from the fact that

their skeletons arc* fossilized ami preserved, it would seem that they moved in shallow waters, this cannot l»e predicted with certainty. Some of the varieties at all events may have been frequenters of the deep sea, and may like the whales, or like thediwlo ami the moa on land, be declining gradually in numbers until only a small remnant of them are left. These, keeping away from shore, might easily remain unperceived or l»e sighted but very occasionally in the way the sea-serj>ent reveals himself to an astonished and incredulous world. Let us live in the hope that the vexed question of that mysterious stranger’s existence may be some day solved. If he could In? captured before the coming great American exhibition and be taken there by the indefatigable Barnum it would be a very * tall thing ’ in favour of that enterprise ami confer lasting immortality U|M»n the national showman. In the present issue we publish an illustration representing the serpent’s latent apparition, and immediately below another showing the fossil framework of the plesiosaurus, from which our readers can form their own estimate of the jMkssibility of their being a connection between the two.