Research source

I have not had the opportunity of consulting this work, but the passage about the sea-serpent runs m

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 170
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

VON FERRY’S declaration that the head of the sea-serpent resembled that of a horse, we cannot give another explanation than that it evidently was held at nearly right angles with the neck, that the nostrils were wide opened and large, and that the mane on the animal’s neck altogether must have led him to think so

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 only

As to Mr. VON FERRY’S declaration that the head of the sea-serpent resembled that of a horse, we cannot give another explanation than that it evidently was held at nearly right angles with the neck, that the nostrils were wide opened and large, and that the mane on the animal’s neck altogether must have led him to think so. The statement that the colour of the head was greyish, apparently contradictory to what had as yet been said about the animal’s colour, viz., that it is a dark brown one, may be explained, I think, as follows: the sea-serpent has a skin as woolly as seals and sea-lions have; it had swum a long time with its head two feet above the water, and the weather being very hot, its skin was dried up, and had got a colour quite different from that when being wet. When wet the common seal has a greenish or brownish black colour, but when dry a greyish yellow one, with a somewhat dark greenish hue; and the spots become less visible. So we see that sea-lions are dark brown when wet, but when lying on the stone border of their basin in our Zoological Gardens they very soon become dry in the sunbeams and show a greyish yellow colour. But returning to Mr. VON FERRY’S sea-serpent, the mouth, however, was black and very large.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This 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 only

Lattice compares morphology, behaviour and setting while keeping misidentification, folklore, exaggeration, error and known animals available as alternatives.

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