274 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s.ix. OCT. 1,1921. NAMING OF PUBLIC ROOMS IN INNS (12 S. ix. 189, 231). In response to PROFESSOR BENSLY'S question (ante, p. 232), there are present-day instances of names on doors at the Clarendon Hotel, Oxford. The room I occupied there a few days ago had " Sun " painted on the door. I noticed also on other doors " Ebor " and " Stuart." In- stead of a number, my room was referred to by the servants and in the bill by its name. C. A. COOK. THE SEA-SERPENT (12 S. ix. 210). Consult Pontopiddan (Erich). ' The Natural His- tory of Norway.' London, 1755. Fol. Part TL, pp. 195-210, illust. ' An Essay on the Credibility of the Exist- ence of the Kraken, Sea-serpent and Other Sea Monsters.' London, 1849. 8vo. Taunton (W. D.). ' Remarks on the Sea- serpent, Dragon, and Leviathan of the Scriptures.' Hertford, 1853. 8vo. Oudemans (A. C.). 'The Great Sea- serpent.' Leiden and London, 1892. 8vo. Owen (Sir Richard). Collection of MS. Notes, Cuttings, &c., in Brit. Mus. (Nat. Hist.). Lee (Henry). ' Sea Monsters Unmasked.' International Fisheries Exhibition, London, 1883. Svo., pp. 52-103. J. ARDAGH. The correspondent who desires " sugges- tions towards a bibliography of sea-serpent tales " may save himself much trouble and research if he will procure a volume with the following title : ' The Great Sea Serpent : an Historical and Critical Treatise,' by C. Oudemans. Roy. 8vo., pp. i-xv., l-*592, with 82 illustrations. Leiden, E. J. Bull ; London, Luzac and Co., 1893. The author seems to have collected every printed report and story of a sea-serpent that he could lay his hands upon, good, bad, and indifferent, and arranged them chronologically, from the ' History ' of Olaus Magnus, 1555, down to a Dutch weekly newspaper, De Amster- dammer of July, 1890. When reviewing this book on its apppearance in The Zoologist for October, 1893, I wrote as follows : He would have done better had he omitted more than half of the stories he has reprinted, as being quite unworthy of credence or considera- tion. To have taken only the most authentic accounts of the appearance of strange marine forms supposed to have been sea-serpents, to have examined them critically from the zoologist's point of view, and to have compared them one with another, to show their consistencies and in- consistencies, would have been an interesting and useful piece of work ; but the remarkable conclu- sions at which Mr. Oudemans has arrived show that he cannot be regarded as a safe guide, and that the reader, so far from accepting his conclu- sion, must be left to form his own opinion of the value of the various accounts presented to him. Although Mr. Oudemans had never seen a " sea- serpent" himself, nor examined or dissected ap- portion of one procured by anybody else, he had no hesitation in evolving an animal from the de- scriptions which he had collected, and bestowing upon it a scientific name ! His illogical and unscientific remarks may be accordingly disregarded, and the only reason for directing attention to his work is for the sake of the titles of publications on the sea-serpent which it contains, extending to nearly 600 pages. While on the subject, it may not be amiss to mention a little book which from its small size and scarcity is probably very little known. The copy which lies before me was purchased about five and twenty years ago, and I have not since seen another in any second-hand book- seller's catalogue. ' Letters from the Hon. David Humphreys, F.R.S., to the Rt. Hon. Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society, London ; containing some account of the Serpent of the Ocean frequently seen in Gloucester Bay ' (Cape Ann, Massa- chusetts). Post 8vo., pp. 86. New York, published by Kirk and Mercein, No. 22, Wall Street, 1817. The writer of these letters took considerable pains to collect information and take down i the "statements under oath" of eye- | witnesses who declared they had seen, and I attempted to describe, a huge serpent off I the coast of Massachusetts in August and | September, 1817. Large rewards were offered I to fishermen and. others for the capture of
- the monster, which was described as having
! a head like that of a turtle, and an estimated | length of over fifty feet ; but in spite of the | efforts made to kill or secure it, it eluded | all the attempts of its pursuers and eventually ! disappeared. . J. E. HARTING. MERMANNTJS : PALMA (12 S. ix. 212).
- Thomas Mermann (1547-1612) belonged to
a class which is not yet entirely extinct, that of physicians who are at the same time hu- [manists. Two of Lipsius's Epistles are I addressed to him, Nos. 55 and 57 in ' Epis- Itolamm Centuria ad Germanos et Gallos.' i Both are directed to Munich, their dates I being, respectively, June 24, 1599, and | Dec. 24, 1600. Both contain references to I a common friend, the well-known Thomas Fienus, author of ' De Viribus Imaginationis [1608]. In the former letter we find that Mermann had written to solicit Lipsius's
