carried from its natural domain by a floating iceberg, would have (after its iceberg had melted) to urge its way steadily southwards, as the supposed sea-serpent was doing; and probably the creature approached the _Dædalus_ to scan her “capabilities as a resting-place, as it paddled its long, stiff body past the ship.” “In so doing it would raise a head of the form and colour described and delineated by Captain M’Quhæ”—its head only, be it remarked, corresponding with the captain’s description. The neck also would be of the right diameter. The thick neck, passing into an inflexible trunk, the longer and coarser hair on the upper part of which would give rise to the idea “explained by the similes above cited” (of a mane or bunch of sea-weed), the paddles would be out of sight; and the long eddy and wake created by the propelling action of the tail would account for the idea of a long serpentine body, at least for this idea occurring to one “looking at the strange phenomenon with a sea-serpent in his mind’s eye.” “It is very probable that not one on board the _Dædalus_ ever before beheld a gigantic seal freely swimming in the open ocean.” The excitement produced by the strange spectacle, and the recollection of “old Pontoppidan’s sea-serpent with the mane,” would suffice, Professor Owen considered, to account for the metamorphosis of a sea-elephant into a maned sea-serpent. This was not the whole of Professor Owen’s argument; but it may be well to pause here, to consider the corrections immediately made by Captain M’Quhæ; it may be noticed, first, that Professor Owen’s argument seems sufficiently to dispose of the belief that the creature really was a sea-serpent, or any cold-blooded reptile. And this view of the matter has been confirmed by later observations. But few, I imagine, can readily accept the belief that Captain M’Quhæ and his officers had mistaken a sea-elephant for a creature such as they describe and picture. To begin with, although it might be probable enough that no one on board the _Dædalus_ had ever seen a gigantic seal freely swimming in the open ocean—a sight which Professor Owen himself had certainly never seen—yet we can hardly suppose they would not have known a sea-elephant under such circumstances. Even if they had never seen a sea-elephant at all, they would surely know what such an animal is like. No one could mistake a sea-elephant for any other living creature, even though his acquaintance with the animal were limited to museum specimens or pictures in books. The supposition that the entire animal, that is, its entire length, should be mistaken for 30 or 40 feet of the length of a serpentine neck, seems, in my judgment, as startling as the ingenious theory thrown out by some naturalists when they first heard of the giraffe—to the effect that some one of lively imagination had mistaken the entire body of a short-horned antelope for the neck of a much larger animal!