The Monster's Credentials
THIS is a very entertaining book ; it is also, one must hasten to add, a serious contribution to scientific knowledge. The " monster " of Loch Ness has attained world-wide notoriety and has been the subject of newspaper publicity to an extent usually reserved for topics of sport or criminology. It was most desirable that an attempt should be made to discover what was at the bottom of it all. This attempt Lt.-Comdr. Gould has made, and until the monster itself is brought to the dissecting table it is hard to see how his methods could be bettered. He went to Loch Ness to study the evidence on the spot, and, although he was not fortunate enough to get a sight of " X " himself, he interviewed over fifty persons who had seen it and made careful notes of the accounts they gave. The investigation seems to have been conducted with scrupulous impartiality and with every care to avoid leading questions. He gives charts showing the relative positions of the observers and the objects observed, and numerous diagrammatic sketches either drawn by the witnesses or approved by them. Incidentally, he obtained some light, not altogether unexpected, on the methods of " the more vigorously conducted " of the daily newspapers. "Over and over again I had occasion to compare a personal statement, made to myself, with a Press statement attributed to the same witness ; and, in far too many cases I found that the more sensational features of the latter were explicitly disavowed, as interpolations, by their reputed author." He discusses in turn the numerous " explanations " that have been given, many of them too absurd to be worth the trouble he takes in refuting them, and then analyses the evidence and gives his own conclusions.
Lt.-Comdr. Gould has certain important qualifications for an inquiry of this kind. He is a sailor, experienced in judging distances at sea, and well aware of the tricks that atmospheric conditions may play with the sizes and shapes of things seen over water. He repeatedly disclaims any special knowledge of zoology, although he is plainly better equipped, in this respect also, than many of those who have not hesitated to be dogmatic on the subject of the " monster." At all events hO seems to have -aVoided serious blunders except- on one or
two points such as (p. 211) the attribution of a swim-bladder to a shark. _ , . _ • When the evidence is brought together and purged of the more sensational accretions there can be no doubt that it is very impressive. There need be no more talk of " mass hallucination " nor any question that " X," whatever it may
• be, is a thing of flesh and blood. Many of the witnesses, it is now clear, had no significant preconceptions of what they might expect, and the appearances took, them _quite by sur- prise. Lt.-Comdr. Gould is quite entitled to claim that, after discarding a good deal of discrepant detail,- there is a sufficient residuum of agreement on a number of points to deserve scientific consideration. If the witnesses. were even approxi- mately right in their estimates of size ; if the head and neck that many of them saw had, even roughly, the proportions attributed to them ; if the creature had a long tail ; above all, if the object shown in the photograph taken by Mr. Wilson and reproduced in the frontispiece was at anything like the distance from his camera that he supposed ; then it is beyond doubt that the inhabitant of Loch Ness is some animal hitherto unknown to science. If, on the other hand, the margin allowed for error in these respects has not been ample enough, then there is still a possibility that the creature may be a large seal. There, for the present, the matter must rest. A Scottish monster is entitled to a Scottish verdict of " not proven." Lt.-Comdr. Gould's own suggestion that it is "a vastly enlarged, long-necked, marine form of the newt " is described by himself as appearing improbable. With this, at any rate, most zoologists will agree.
In the concluding chapters several reports of " sea serpents" recently observed in various parts of the world are recorded, and three cases are discussed in detail and illustrated with photographs of stranded carcases which were at first regarded as those of unknown monsters. One of these,. cast .ashore at Santa Cruz, California, proved to be a beaked whale, or bottle-nosed whale, of which the remains had been,." faked " before photographing. Those found at Prah Sands, Cornwall, and at Querqueville, near Cherbourg, were Basking Sharks. The details given provide valuable evidence of the extent to which the descriptions and sketches of untrained observers may diverge from reality. IV. T. CA LMAN.
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