This view of the so-called fabulous animals of antiquity has been confirmed by the results of modern zoological research. The merman, zoologically possible (not in all details, of course, but generally), has found its antitype in the dugong and the manatee; the roc in the condor, or perhaps in those extinct species whose bones attest their monstrous proportions; the unicorn in the rhinoceros; even the dragon in the pterodactyl of the green-sand; while the centaur, the minotaur, the winged horse, and so forth, have become recognized as purely imaginary creatures, which had their origin simply in the fanciful combination of known forms, no existent creatures having even suggested these monstrosities. It is not to be wondered at that the sea should have been more prolific in monstrosities and in forms whose real nature has been misunderstood. Land animals cannot long escape close observation. Even the most powerful and ferocious beasts must succumb in the long run to man, and in former ages, when the struggle was still undecided between some race of animals and savage man, individual specimens of the race must often have been killed, and the true appearance of the animal determined. Powerful winged animals might for a longer time remain comparatively mysterious creatures even to those whom they attacked, or whose flocks they ravaged. A mighty bird, or a pterodactylian creature (a late survivor of a race then fast dying out), might swoop down on his prey and disappear with it too swiftly to be made the subject of close scrutiny, still less of exact scientific observation. Yet the general characteristics even of such creatures would before long be known. From time to time the strange winged monster would be seen hovering over the places where his prey was to be found. Occasionally it would be possible to pierce one of the race with an arrow or a javelin; and thus, even in those remote periods when the savage progenitors of the present races of man had to carry on a difficult contest with animals now extinct or greatly reduced in power, it would become possible to determine accurately the nature of the winged enemy. But with sea creatures, monstrous, or otherwise, the case would be very different. To this day we remain ignorant of much that is hidden beneath the waves of the “hollow-sounding and mysterious main.” Of far the greater number of sea creatures, it may truly be said that we never see any specimens except by accident, and never obtain the body of any except by very rare accident. Those creatures of the deep sea which we are best acquainted with, are either those which are at once very numerous and very useful as food or in some other way, or else those which are very rapacious and thus expose themselves, by their attacks on men, to counter-attack and capture or destruction. In remote times, when men were less able to traverse the wide seas, when, on the one hand, attacks from great sea creatures were more apt to be successful,