ALOES

One of a number of strange beasts reported by early explorers of the New World, the Aloes appears in a 16th-century work by the antiquary Ambroise Pare, On Monsters and Marvels, in which it is described as a sea creature which had the head of a goose, a very long neck and four large flippers. It may have been a partial memory of the seal with a bird standing on its back. This is typical of many such descriptions penned by the first European explorers of the New World.