Here are photos of a black domestic cat that was mistaken for a black panther in New York:
http://www.wktv.com/news/local/Panther-on-the-loose-Not-so-fast-101688238.html
A column on a vaguely described sea serpent from the 1800s:
http://chronicle.augusta.com/225/2010-08-29/sea-serpent-captured-never-identified
At the Frontiers of Zoology group, I re-posted the Sea-serpent account and compared it to a similar story from South Carolina in 1850, which both Heuvelmans and Oudemans call a hoax. This account tends to stink toward the postscript end where unnamed Naturalist allegedly rushed off messages to a named Doctor Mitchell in NYC (who did not respond and so that information is valueless)
ReplyDeleteThat part in itself is highly suspicious, and probably indicates that BOTH accounts are indeed plain journalistic hoaxes.