THE SEDALIA WEEKLY BAZOO — MARCH 26, 1878
A Rival to the Sea Serpent
A recent bit of news from South America has attracted unwonted attention on the part of zoologists to the highlands of Southern Brazil. There is reason to believe that a gigantic animal of subterranean habits, as yet unknown to naturalists, exists in the region where the great rivers Paragury and Parana take their rise. It is variously described, but all accounts represent it as a very large trench-digging creature not less than three feet in thickness. The inhabitants call it the Minhocao, and believe it to be an enormous scale-covered earth worm some fifty yards long, which ploughs up the ground after the fashion of a giant mole, overturning full-grown trees in its path.
Stories of such an animal would be worthy of little attention if they came from a single unknown traveller. As it is, however, they are communicated to the scientific world by an accomplished German naturalists. Fritz Muller, long resident in Brazil, who was carefully collected and weighed the evidence as to the asserted existence of this underground monster. Native testimony certainly makes out a pretty strong probability that some such creature exists. Herr Muller has never seen the animal himself, but from his summary of the native accounts furnished to the Zoological Garden, a German journal of natural history, it appears to have been seen on at least three occasions. It is found only near rivers. To one observer, who saw it lying on the bank
