On the occasion referred to, the official reports of the animal seen were sent to the Admiralty; and the Right Hon. R. A. Cross, then Secretary of State for the Home Department, requested the opinion of Mr. Frank Buckland on the matter, the result being a full account given to the readers of _Land and Water_, to which Mr. F. Buckland was so popular a contributor. In addition to Owen’s valued opinion, the public were favoured with able papers by Mr. A. D. Bartlett, of the Zoological Gardens, Captain David Gray, of the whaling ship _Eclipse_, Mr. Henry Lee, and Frank Buckland himself. From the discrepancies in the records of the four officers, and the sketches of nothing in nature which accompanied those records, not one of those able writers ventured an assertion as to what the strange animal could possibly be. The captain—Commander Pearson—‘saw the fish through a telescope;’ a ‘seal-shaped head of immense size, large flappers, and part of a huge body.’ Lieutenant Haynes saw ‘a ridge of fins above the surface of the water, extending about thirty feet, and varying from five to six feet in height.’ Through the telescope he saw ‘a head, two flappers, and about _thirty_ feet of an animal’s shoulder; the shoulder was about _fifteen_ feet across.’ The animal propelled itself by its two ‘fins.’ Mr. Douglas M. Forsyth saw ‘a huge monster, having a head about fifteen to twenty feet in length.’ The part of the body not in the water ‘was certainly not under forty-five or fifty feet in length.’ Mr. Moore, the engineer, observed ‘an uneven ridge of what appeared to be the fins of a fish above the surface of the water, varying in height, and as near as he could judge, from seven to eight feet above the water, and extending about forty feet along the surface.’ Though we are not able to say what this strange animal really was, we can positively affirm what it was _not_. A snake has neither fins, flippers, flappers, nor ‘shoulders fifteen feet broad;’ therefore this assuredly was no ‘sea serpent.’ Nor would it be introduced here, excepting as inviting further comment on its mysterious existence. And curious enough it is to remark the persistence with which all these anomalies are announced as ‘_the_ sea serpent,’ as if the sea produced but one solitary specimen, which is now the shape of a ‘turtle;’ next of a ‘frog,’ with ‘one hundred and fifty feet of tail;’ then a creature with ‘fins’ and a ‘mane,’ ‘flippers’ and ‘flappers’ and ‘ridges of fins.’ All these appendages are one after the other described, and yet as belonging to a ‘serpent,’ which has no such appendages. A few of the recorders do really describe something more of the true ophidian, and those who do this, not being familiar with ophidian manners, are more useful as witnesses than those who at once report a ‘serpent,’ and afterwards proceed unknowingly to disprove their own words.