Part of the lecture concerned the origins of mythological monsters. There has been a great deal of talk lately about the Abominable Snow-men, reputed to be large, hairy, naked men living above the snow line on the Himalayas. Showing a slide of the double footmarks that gave rise to the legend, Dr. Huxley argued that they were the tracks of a large bear which put its hind paws into its front paw marks.
Slides were also shown of four types of sea serpents. One was the Moha Moha, seen in Northern Australia in 1890 by a schoolteacher and attested by other white eye-witnesses as well as natives, Dr, Huxley suggested that this and similar monsters might have been shoals of porpoise, giant cuttle-fish, basking sharks or ribbon fish. He also described how the mermaid was perpetuated by travellers who saw dugongs, aquatic mammals found in tropical seas. They appear to stand up in the water carrying their young their breast The unicorn, he said, might have been based on the oryx, an antelope with long pointed horns. Although it has two horns, it appears, when seen sidewise, to have only one. Since in medizeval times the unicorn's horn was thought to have wonderful medicinal properties, Dr, Huxley told how medieval travellers encouraged the legend when they brought back tusks from the East and sold them as unicorn's horns,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.