Date: Thu, 09 Jan 2003 23:08:21 -0500
From: William Ansley 
Subject: RE: (urth) The leatherskin

At 11:06 AM -0600 1/9/03, James Wynn wrote:
>William Ansley heroically proffers:
>Way back on October 18, 1999 I argued that the leatherskin has twelve legs
>and no one has bothered arguing with my conclusions yet. What I said then:
>----------------
>The leatherskin, one of the largest I have ever seen, stood with six massive
>legs and half its weight on the starboard gunwale, over which silver water
>cascaded. [OBW (hc), p. 62]
>----------------
>If this creature has only six legs and all of them are on the starboard
>gunwale (rather a tricky balancing act in the first place), then how can the
>gunwale be only bearing half its weight?
>
>
>Crush blunders forward:
>Ok. I think I have an understanding of what a leatherskin looks like.
>
>The leatherskin is giant dugong with six pectoral flippers and a manticore's
>jaws.
>
>The reason "half its weight" was on the starboard gunwale was because its
>massive tail-end was dangling in the water.
>

Oh happy day! Finally, someone is arguing with my conclusions!

If I am to buy your argument, I have to believe that Horn doesn't 
know the difference between flippers and legs. Maybe he doesn't. 
Maybe he has never seen any creature with fins or flippers on the 
Whorl, so he calls all such appendages "legs." But, until you can 
show me a quote where Horn or some other former Whorl denizen talks 
about fish legs, I will remain doubtful.
-- 

William Ansley

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