The Red Cloud chief., 1877-03-01
ways ingeniously imagined; We must

assume that they sn told untrufhs
before We al reject the belief tina; some
as yet unknown sea creature was seen
by them. That creature may quite pos
sibly not have been a serpent properly
30 called; the picture drawn by o!
the midshipmen may have been incor.
rect in details las Professor Owen in
sisted 1t must have BEEN: but, unless
the whole affair was a fraud. a sea ami
NAL Was seen which had all the appear
ance Of a gigantic serpent
And the idea Of fraud in such mat
tiers is not nearly 81 reasonable as many
seem TO imagine. Travellers are some
! times said to tell marvellous stories ,
but it is a noteworthy fact that in nine
cases out Of ten the marvellous stories
| Of travellers have been confirmed. Men
ridiculed the tale, brought back by those
who had sailed far TO the South. that
the sun there moves from right 10 left,
instead Of from left To right, as you face
his midday place: but We know that
these travellers told the truth. The
first account Of the giraffe was laughed
TO scorn, and ii was satisfactorily
proved that no such creature could
possibly exist. The gorilla would have
been jeered out Of existence but for the
fortunate arrival Of a skeleton Of his at
An early stage Of our acquaintance with
that prepOesessing cousin Of our
"MOnstrOus cuttlefish were thought TO
be monstrous lies. till the Alecton, In
1851, came upon n and captured its
tail, whose weight of 40 pounds led
naturalists to estimatethe entire weight
Of the creature at 1000 pounds, or nearly
a couple of tons. In 1873, again, two
fishermen encountered a gigantic cutie
in Conception Bay, Newfoundland.
whose arms were about 35 feet in length
(the fisherman cut off from one arm a
piece % feet long, while its body was
estimated at 90 feet in length and 5 feet
in diameter-s0 that the devil-fsh of
Victor HugO's famous story was a mere
baby cutie in comparison with the
Newfoundland monster. The mermaid,
again, has been satisfactorily identified
with the manatee, or woman fish, as |
the Portuguese call it, which assumes,
says Captain ScOresby. such positions
that the human appearance is very
closely initiated
las for the stories of sea-serpents.
naturalists have been far less disposed
to be incredulous than the general pub
lie. DIR. Andrew Wilson. for instance,
after speaking of the recorded Observa-
tiOns in much such terms as | have
used above, says, We may then affirm
safely that there are many verified
pieces of evidence on record Of strange
marine forms having been met with,
which evidences. judged according to
ordinary and cOmmOn-sense rules, 60 to
prove that certain hitherto undescribed
marine organisms do certainly exist in
the sea depths
AS to the support which natural his
tory a give to the above proposition,
biologists but admit he proceeds,
the correctness of the observation
Certain organisms, and especially those
of marine (e. 9. certain whales), are
to be Of exceedingly rare occur
renee. Our knowledge of marine rep
tllla is cOnfessedly very small; and,
best of all, there is no counter objection
feasible argument which the natur-
alist a offer by way of denying the
above proposition. He would be forced
o admit the existence of purely ma
-ine genera of snakes which possess
compressed tails, adapted for swimming
and other points of organization admit
eddy suited for a purely aquatic ex-
If. therefore. We admit the possibil-
ty-nay. ever the reasonable probable
ty-that gigantic members of these
snakes may occasionally be de-
1elOped, We should state a powerful
,ase for the assumed and probable ex-
stence of a natural 'se%a-serpent' We
we do not well see how such a
'hain of probabilities can be readily set
side, supported as they are in the pos
of their occurrence by zOOlOgi-
al science and in the actual details Of
he case by evidence as trustworthy in
many cases rs that received in our
ourts OF law. When we remember
low few fish or other inhabitants of
he sea are ever seen compared with
he countless millions which exist, that
lot one specimen of some tribes will
'e seen for many years in succession,
nd that some tribes are only known to
xist because a single specimen or even
single skeleton has been obtained, we
nay well believe that in the sea, as in
eaven and earth. there are more things