by 'Pontoppidan' (_History of Norway_), the supposed vertical undulations of the snake seen out of water have been the burly bodies of so many porpoises swimming in line--the connecting undulations beneath the surface have been supplied by the imagination. The dorsal fins of basking sharks, as figured by Dr. Andrew Wilson, may have furnished the 'ridge of fins;' an enormous conger is not an impossibility; a giant turtle may have done duty, with its propelling flippers and broad back; or a marine snake of enormous size may really have been seen. But if we accept as accurate the observations recorded (which I certainly do not in all cases, for they are full of errors and mistakes), the difficulty is not entirely met, even by this last admission, for the instances are very few in which an Ophidian proper--a true serpent--is indicated. There has seemed to be wanting an animal having a long snake-like neck, a small head, and a slender body, and propelling itself by paddles. "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 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 Enaliosaurians, or Marine Lizards, whose fossil remains are so abundant in the Oolite and the Lias. This view has 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 for 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.'