y
conjecture. However, the solution of the problem submitted to me may
modify the form of the dilemma. Either we do know all the varieties of
beings which people our planet, or we do not. If we do NOT know them
all--if Nature has still secrets in the deeps for us, nothing is more
conformable to reason than to admit the existence of fishes, or
cetaceans of other kinds, or even of new species, of an organisation
formed to inhabit the strata inaccessible to soundings, and which an
accident of some sort has brought at long intervals to the upper level
of the ocean.

"If, on the contrary, we DO know all living kinds, we must necessarily
seek for the animal in question amongst those marine beings already
classed; and, in that case, I should be disposed to admit the existence
of a gigantic narwhal.

"The common narwhal, or unicorn of the sea, often attains a length of
sixty feet. Increase its size fivefold or tenfold, give it strength
proportionate to its size, lengthen its destructive weapons, and you
obtain the animal required. It will have the proportions determined by
the officers of the Shannon, the instrument required by the perforation
of the Scotia, and the power necessary to pierce the hull of the
steamer.

"Indeed, the narwhal is armed with a sort of ivory sword, a halberd,
according to the expression of certain naturalists. The principal tusk
has the hardness of steel. Some of these tusks have been found buried
in the bodies of whales, which the unicorn always attacks with success.
Others have been drawn out, not without trouble, from the bottoms of
ships, which they had pierced through and through, as a gimlet pierces
a barrel. The Museum of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris possesses one
of these defensive weapons, two yards and a quarter in length, and
fifteen inches in diameter at the base.

"Very well! suppose this weapon to be six times stronger and the animal
ten times more powerful; launch it at the rate of twenty miles an hour,
and you obtain a shock capable of producing the catastrophe required.
Until further information, therefore, I shall maintain it to be a
sea-unicorn of colossal dimensions, armed not with a halberd, but with
a real spur, as the armoured frigates, or the `rams' of war, whose
massiveness and motive power it would possess at the same time. Thus
may this puzzling phenomenon be explained, unless there be something
over and above all that one has ever conjectured, seen, perceiv