GESNER in his Nomenclator aquatilium animantium, 1560, gives two figures of the sea-serpent of which I give…
- Date of account
- Late nineteenth-century survey
- Source
- The great sea-serpent: an historical and critical treatise
- Reference
- The great sea-serpent: an historical and critical treatise · selected passage 151
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English edition of a European scholarly compilation
- Translation
- English edition of A. C. Oudemans's historical survey
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
GESNER in his Nomenclator aquatilium animantium, 1560, gives two figures of the sea-serpent of which I give facsimiles in Fig
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyGESNER in his _Nomenclator aquatilium animantium_, 1560, gives two figures of the sea-serpent of which I give facsimiles in Fig. 15 and 16.--GESNER says that there is a large map of Scandinavia in OLAUS MAGNUS’ work, and on this map our fig. 15 is drawn in the Baltic Sea, and our fig. 16 in the Atlantic Ocean. In the original edition of 1555 there is but a small map of Scandinavia, which shows only the heads of several animals in the sea. I therefore conclude that there still exists another edition of MAGNUS’ work which I don’t know. Returning to our figures we immediately observe that the drawer has delineated large _snakes_, the one without scales, and swimming with _vertical_ undulations, the other with large scales, and that he did not intend to represent a dorsal fin by the medial line, but only a medial row of scales, unequal to the lateral.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis is a historical compilation of unusual-animal reports and argument. Witness testimony, repetition between publications and the author's zoological assumptions all affect independence and reliability.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice compares morphology, behaviour and setting while keeping misidentification, folklore, exaggeration, error and known animals available as alternatives.
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