But these sudden tempests are very strange, and how they arise with such violent speed exceeds the bounds of ordinary admiration. Whereupon it is again supposed that these monsters are verie devils, and by their power such strange storms are raised. Howbeit for my part I think otherwise, and do much rather affirm that these storms, in my judgment, are thus raised, namely, by the thickening and breaking of the aire; which the snortling, rushing, and howling of these beasts, assembled in an innumerable companie, causeth. For it is certain that sounds will break and alter the aire (as I have heard it of a citie freed from the plague by the thundering noise of cannons), and also I suppose that the violent rushing of these beasts causeth much water to flie up and thicken the aire, and by their howling and snortling under the waters they do blow up, and as it were attenuate the waves, and make them arise in a thinner substance than at other times; so that Nature, having all these helps, in an instant worketh to the amazement of the mariners, and often to the danger of their lives. Besides, shall we think that spirits use to feed, and will be so foolish as to go and hang themselves on an hook for a bait? They may have occult properties (as the loadstone hath) to work strange feats, and yet be neither spirits nor devils; for experience likewise teacheth that they die sooner or later after their taking, neither can a spirit have flesh and bones as they have.” [Illustration: FIG. 28.] The monsters of the deep are best seen at the times of the equinox, “for then,” says Pliny, “by the whirlwinds, rains and tempests which rush with violence from the rugged mountains, the seas are turned up from the very bottom, and thus the billows roll and raise these beasts out of the deep parts of the ocean.” It certainly seems a much more reasonable theory that the storms produce the beasts than that the beasts produce the storms. [Illustration: FIG. 29.] On an antique seal we remember to have seen a sea-elephant, a creature having the forelegs, tusks, trunk, and great flapping ears of the African elephant, yet terminating in the body of a fish, and duly furnished with piscine tail and fins. This outrageous combination would seem to indicate the limit possible to absurdity in this direction. When the ancient writers would desire to people the vast unknown of air and sea, their thoughts naturally turned to those creatures of the land with which they were more familiar. Hence, the denizens of the air or ocean are not really creations at all, but adaptations, wings or fins being added to horses, lions and the like, according to the new element in which they were to figure. Of these the sea-horses that drew the chariot of Neptune through the waves, or the winged steed Pegasus, are examples that at once occur to one’s mind.