"THAT OLD LEVIATHAN"

Instead of bringing tales of mountainous wintry seas, floating derelicts, or "bootleg" pirates, Captain John Roberts of the White Star liner Baltic has sought to vary the season's program with a description of the discovery of a sea monster in mid-Atlantic. Twelve feet long and nine feet around, of dark brown or black color, ears and snout similar to that on a pig--it seems to be a monster not otherwise known outside of the medieval "Bestiaries".

The romance of the sea still lingers, in spite of steam and wireless. Mariners and fictioneers, between them, have kept alive the tradition that such natural monstrosities do exist. From the Hydra down, through Pliny's dragon which the army of Regulus besieged, and the great beast that Beowulf conquered in a battle to the death, famous stories have grown up around "facts" that science denies. The "sea-worm" was a very real object to the northern sailors, and it has flavored all the old literature of the ocean.

Recent reports of unrecorded sea-monsters are more common than one would suppose. A creature seen off Llandudno, like a long, undulating water-snake on mammoth scale, was convincing to the eyes of many beholders. Stories of a similar monster were so current along the American coasts during the last century that the hypothetical beast won the soubriquet of "American Sea-Serpent". Only last year, the repeated tales from South America of a "prehistoric" reptile sporting in the waters of a lake in the Andes, set zoologists agog and even stimulated a searching-party, which has not yet made its report.

It is comforting to think that there may still be something in the animal world unknown to man. The more credulous scientists are willing to admit that perhaps a few members of an "extinct" species are still "carrying on". Perhaps the Great Auk's ghost may yet return and hatch its phantom egg.