From all this evidence it would appear that there are various unknown creatures of vast size inhabiting the sea, which are but rarely seen, and that one of these is a gigantic serpent that crushes its prey to death, like a boa-constrictor on land. When one thinks how vast the expanse of ocean is, how profound are its depths, and how inaccessible, compared to the land, is the floor over which its waves roll, this does not seem very wonderful, especially as, even on the land, new animals, sometimes of considerable size, are from time to time discovered. The real wonder is that the sea-serpent should have been disbelieved in for such a very long time. Now, a great many people do believe in it, even including some of the more learned ones, who tell us so in solemn, pompous strains, as if what they thought about a thing was almost as important as the thing itself—or, indeed, quite, if not more so. There are scientists, in fact, who seem really to fancy that by giving their adherence to anything, they allow it to be, and so, as it were, create it; nothing else, surely, can explain the sense of awful responsibility under which they seem to labour. No wonder, then, that they should hesitate before saying, “Let there be sea-serpents!” Any conscientious man would, taking their size and voracity into consideration. Next to the great sea-serpent, the largest and most powerful constricting snake that we know of is the anaconda of South America, which grows to at least thirty feet long, and is said by the Spaniards to be capable of overpowering and eating a bull. Hence the Spanish name for it is _matatoro_, or bull-killer, but whether the name is founded upon a fact or a fiction does not appear to be certain. Waterton thought that the Spaniards must have known what they were talking about, and that the very name was an evidence of the thing. He was told, moreover, that the matatoro grew to a much greater length than thirty feet—more than double as long, in fact—but of this, again, there is no satisfactory evidence. It does not seem in itself impossible that a snake of even thirty, or thirty-five, feet in length should be able to destroy a bull; but there is one thing which inclines me to doubt the anaconda’s doing so, as well as its growing to such a size as the Spaniards reported. Before South America was colonised by the Spaniards there were no cattle in the country, so we must assume that this great snake was not larger or stronger than would be necessary to allow it to overcome the largest wild animals with which it came in contact. These would be the jaguar and the tapir, and as neither of these are so large, or, I think, so strong as a Spanish South American bull, the latter ought, one would think, to be too much for an anaconda. This is not quite conclusive, indeed, for the jaguar itself found no difficulty in preying on horses and cattle as soon as they were introduced, though it had had nothing larger to attack, before, than the tapir or huanaco.