Page:Twenty Thousand Verne Frith 1876.pdf/23

 solution it advanced also gave free scope to the imagination. The human mind is pleased with great conceptions and supernatural beings. Now the sea is precisely the best vehicle for them, the sole medium where these giants, compared to which terrestrial animals, elephants or rhinoceros, are but dwarfs, can be produced and developed. These ocean depths contain the largest known species of mammalia, and perhaps contain molluscs of unheard-of size, crustacea frightful to behold, such as lobsters of 100 metres, and crabs weighing 200 tons! Why not? Formerly terrestrial animals of the geological epochs—the quadrupeds, apes, reptiles, and birds—were all formed upon gigantic models. The Creator cast them in a colossal mould, which time has by degrees reduced. Why cannot the sea, which never changes, while the earth is ever changing, still retain in its unknown depths these immense specimens of the animal life of former ages? Why cannot it hide within its bosom the last varieties of this Titanic species, whose years are centuries, and whose centuries thousands of years?

But I must not indulge in unbecoming speculations. A truce to these fancies, which time has shown me are terrible realities. I repeat the opinion then expressed of the nature of the phenomenon, and the public admits, without question, the existence of an enormous being which has nothing in common with the fabulous sea-serpents.

But if one party saw in this nothing but a scientific problem to be solved, the others, more positive, above all in England and America, were anxious to purge the ocean of this redoubtable monster, so as to secure safety in transatlantic communication. The commercial and

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