A writer in the _Times_ of November 2, 1848, under the signature F. G. S., pointed out how many of the external characters of the creature seen from the _Dædalus_ corresponded with the belief that it was a long-necked plesiosaurus. “Geologists,” he said, “are agreed in the inference that the plesiosauri carried their necks, which must have resembled the bodies of serpents, above the water, while their propulsion was effected by large paddles working beneath, the short but stout tail acting the part of a rudder.... In the letter and drawing of Captain M’Quhæ ... we have ... the short head, the serpent-like neck, carried several feet above the water. Even the bristly mane in certain parts of the back, so unlike anything found in serpents, has its analogue in the iguana, to which animal the plesiosaurus has been compared by some geologists. But I would most of all insist upon the peculiarity of the animal’s progression, which could only have been effected with the evenness and at the rate described by an apparatus of fins or paddles, not possessed by serpents, but existing in the highest perfection in the plesiosaurus.” At this stage a very eminent naturalist entered the field—Professor Owen. He dwelt first on a certain characteristic of Captain M’Quhæ’s letter which no student of science could fail to notice—the definite statement that the creature _was_ so and so, where a scientific observer would simply have said that the creature presented such and such characteristics. “No sooner was the captain’s attention called to the object,” says Professor Owen, “than ‘it was discovered to be an enormous serpent,’” though in reality the true nature of the creature could not be determined even from the observations made during the whole time that it remained visible. Taking, however, “the more certain characters,” the “head with a convex, moderately capacious cranium, short, obtuse muzzle, gape not extending further than to beneath the eye, which (the eye) is rather small, round, filling closely the palpebral aperture” (that is, the eyelids fit closely[25]); “colour and surface as stated; nostrils indicated in the drawing by a crescentic mark at the end of the nose or muzzle. All these,” proceeds Owen, “are the characters of the head of a warm-blooded mammal, none of them those of a cold-blooded reptile or fish. Body long, dark brown, not undulating, without dorsal or other apparent fins, ‘but something like the mane of a horse, or rather a bunch of sea-weed, washed about its back.’” He infers that the creature had hair, showing only where longest on the back, and therefore that the animal was not a mammal of the whale species but rather a great seal. He then shows that the sea-elephant, or _Phoca proboscidea_, which attains the length of from 20 to 30 feet, was the most probable member of the seal family to be found about 300 miles from the western shore of the southern end of Africa, in latitude 24° 44´. Such a creature, accidentally