Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1889-10-18
STRANGE CREATURES OF THE DEEP.

Stories of Marine. Proving That the Sea
Serpent is Not IA Myth.
OF late years there has been growing
tendency to place more credence than
was at one time done in these tales Of sea
monsters appearing in untoward places
and at inconvenient times to seafaring
men of much credulity. No doubt the
stories of the sea serpent and The like
were, many of them, proved to be little
better than sailors yarns, spun for the
amusement of greenhorns. Sometimes
they were shown to have been grossly
perverted variations, which, when strip
ped of their fictitious embroidery, shrank
to very prosaic dimensions; and not I'M
frequently what perfectly honest people
believed and tried to make others be-
lieve to be horrid monsters turned out to
be punches of seaweed, drift logs COW
cred with barnacles. ribbon fishes of no
great size or even seals and basking
sharks Hence there has been prone
ness to place all these stories in the same
category, and, perhaps for this very rea-
son, sailors sensitive to ridicule have be-
come rather chary of logging" such
uncommon subjects. AT the same time,
unless everything like evidence is to be
dismissed as fable when it does not fit
into the preconceived notions of the the
orist, it is idle to pretend that all these
reports are due either to optical illusion
or to deliberate fraud.
Most of the men who have put their
observations on record are VIGOROUSLY of
good character, keen eyesight and so
long familiar with every appearance
which the surface of the sea presents
that it is simply Sinking the question to
suppose that they must have been de-
ceived or were attempting to deceive 9TH
ers. In many instances an entire ships
crew saw the monster, and in not q few
the witnesses have been well known mer-
chant captains, or even the commanders
of vessels in the royal navy. Thus Capt.
Hope. of her majesty's ship Fly, saw.
fifty years ago, in the Gulf of California.
creature not unlike an alligator, with a
long neck and four paddles, which many
biologists of eminence have not hesitated
to regard as an animal of the icthy osau-
rus or pleiosaurus type, that may have
survived from ancient times in the still
unexplored depths of the ocean. Again,
Capt. McQuahae, of her majesty's ship
Dedalus. saw a snake like animal, which
Richard Owen imagined might have
been large sea elephant. But the eye
witnesses, all of whom were well ac-
quainted with the species in question, I'M
hesitatingly repudiated this hypothesis.
Scarcely more mysterious is the story
of the huge 'snake" which the crew Of
the Pauline saw fourteen years ago,
coiled twice round a sperm whale in the
South Atlantic, and then, after towering
up many feet in the air, dragging its
prey to the bottom. Still more recently
Capt. Pearson and Lieut.. Hayne, of her
majesty's yacht Osborne, officially re-
ported seeing off the coast of Sicily a
snake like animal fully thirty feet in
length, with triangular fins rising Fl i've or
six feet above the water, huge flippers
, which moved like those Of turtle, and
} head six feet in length. This might
possibly, as DIR. Andrew Wilson has sug-
gested, have been monstrous ribbon
. fish, though at the same time there were
circumstances connected with its appear
ance which render this suggestion OF
| doubtful value, DIR. Gunther, among
, other eminent Psychologists. regarding
! the hypothesis as out of keeping with
what is known regarding the habits OF
the regalecus.
Some of the ''sea serpents" may, per
: haps, have been simply basking sharks,
the bones washed up on the shores of the
Isle of Stronsay, in the Orkneys, and for
time thought to belong to some such
animal, being now assigned to species
of Selache. Great cutie fishes are also
accountable for some of the SNAKES
seen by mariners. Such, undeniably
was the Kraken which Hans Egede fig
ures in his famous work on Greenland
and which time and again has beer
noticed off the American shores of such
dimensions as to be quite capable OF
dragging small vessels under water, OF
fighting an unequal battle with the stout
est men. Every allowance being made
for the cutie fish, the shark. the ribbon
fish, the floating seaweed, the school Of
porpoises, the flight of sea fowl and the
like, there remain number of well au
thenticated appearances which there il
no accounting for in any such self com
I placent fashion. We might, perhaps
Z dismiss the "So-Orm" of Magnus ant
II Pontoppiddan as marvels of an uncritica
age, though in all other matters thest
clerical historians were as circumstantia
as bishops ought to be.-London Stand