“I perceived,” wrote Captain Herriman, “something right abeam, about half a mile to the westward, stretched along the water to the length of about twenty‐five to thirty feet, and perceptibly moving from the ship with a steady sinuous motion. The head, which seemed to be lifted several feet above the water, had something resembling a mane running down to the floating portion, and within six feet of the tail it forked out into a sort of double fin.” On approaching in a small boat, however, Captain Herriman discovered that his monster was nothing more formidable than “an immense piece of sea‐weed, evidently detached from a coral reef, and drifting with the current, which sets constantly to the westward in this latitude, and which, together with the swell left by the subsidence of the gale, gave it the sinuous snake‐like motion.” In the _Times_ of 5th February, 1858, a letter from Captain Harrington, of the ship _Castilian_, stating that he and his crew had seen a gigantic serpent on the 12th December, 1857, about ten miles N.E. of St. Helena, brought out another witness on the sea‐weed hypothesis. This was Captain Fred. Smith, of the ship _Pekin_, who gave a very similar account to that of Captain Herriman, stating that in lat. 26° S., long. 6° E., on the 28th December, 1848, he captured what he believed to be a serpent, but what turned out to be a gigantic piece of weed covered with snaky‐looking barnacles. This last imputation brought up “An Officer of H.M. ship _Dædalus_,” whose testimony, in the _Times_ of 16th February, 1858, puts _hors de combat_ the sea‐weed theory in that renowned case. He states that, “at its nearest position, being not more than 200 yards from us, _the eye_, _the mouth_, the nostril, the colour and form, all being _most distinctly visible to us_ ... my impression was it was rather of a lizard than a serpentine character, as its movement was steady and uniform, _as if propelled by fins_, not by any undulatory power.” That there is some mighty denizen of the vasty deep, sometimes but seldom seen, is more than possible, and highly probable; but to which of the recognised classes of created being can this huge rover of the ocean be referred? First of all, is it an animal at all? On two occasions monstrous pieces of weed have been mistaken for the Kraken, but on each occasion the distance from the vessel is estimated at half a mile; while Captain M‘Quhæ says that he was within 200 yards, and Mr. Davidson within thirty‐five yards of the animal. Under these circumstances we may fairly dismiss the sea‐weed hypothesis.