Harrison Press Journal

A SEA SERPENT STORY.

A good instance of the manner in which sea serpent myths originate is afforded by certain paragraphs which have recently appeared in the Australian papers. In its issue of February 23 the Melbourne "Argus" announced the discovery at Swan Bay, island by the officer of a local steamer of the remains of a sea monster that had been stranded there some two months previously.

The creature was said to be in such a bad condition that collecting its remains was a most trying task; but "two heads, the two backbones and part of the ribs" were secured. It was stated that there was "but one body, which had a double spine, and two distinct heads;" while the approximate weight of the animal was estimated at not less than seventy tons, and its length fully sixty feet!

In the issue of the following day the skulls were said to be about three feet long, and to carry a pair of tusks at the tip of the lower jaw. On March 2, the same paper published an announcement that E. Waite of the Australian Museum had identified the remains as those of a ziphioid'—obviously a misprint for "ziphiid." It would thus appear that the alleged double-headed monster of seventy tons weight and sixty feet length was based on two carcasses of one of the species of beaked whales, which are of such comparatively common occurrence on the Australian coasts, and the largest of which is not known to exceed thirty feet in length!—Nature.