The leatherskin

William Ansley · 10 Jan 2003, 04:08 · from urth-v0301.mbox · original

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From: William Ansley <wansley at warwick.net>
Subject: RE: (urth) The leatherskin
Date: Thu, 09 Jan 2003 23:08:21 -0500
Message-ID: <urth-v0301-2638 at digest.urth.net>
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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 massi=
ve
>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 t=
he
>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=20
know the difference between flippers and legs. Maybe he doesn't.=20
Maybe he has never seen any creature with fins or flippers on the=20
Whorl, so he calls all such appendages "legs." But, until you can=20
show me a quote where Horn or some other former Whorl denizen talks=20
about fish legs, I will remain doubtful.
--=20

William Ansley

--=20

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