My article was hotly debated, causing a fine old uproar.

我的文章引起了热烈的讨论，产生了很大的反响。

It rallied a number of supporters. Moreover, the solution it proposed allowed for free play of the imagination.

很有一部分人拥护它。而且丈中提出的结论可以让人随便去设想，没有什么限制。

The human mind enjoys impressive visions of unearthly creatures.

人们总是对那些神奇怪诞的幻想感倒兴趣。

Now then, the sea is precisely their best medium, the only setting suitable for the breeding and growing of such giants--next to which such land animals as elephants or rhinoceroses are mere dwarves.

而海洋正是这些幻想的最好泉源，因为只有海才是巨大动物可以繁殖和成长的环境，陆上的动物，大象或犀牛之类。跟它们比较起来，简直渺小得很。

The liquid masses support the largest known species of mammals and perhaps conceal mollusks of incomparable size or crustaceans too frightful to contemplate, such as 100-meter lobsters or crabs weighing 200 metric tons!

一片汪洋大海里：既然有我们所知道的最巨大的哺乳类动物，说不定也有硕大无比的软体动物和看起来叫人害怕的甲壳动物，如一百米长的大虾，或二百吨重的螃蟹！

Why not? Formerly, in prehistoric days, land animals were built on a gigantic scale.

为什么不能有呢？从前，跟地质学纪年同时代的陆上动物，四足兽，四手兽，爬虫类，鸟类，都是按照巨大的模型创造的。

Our Creator cast them using a colossal mold that time has gradually made smaller.

造物者甩高大的模型把它们造出来，经过漫长的岁月，这模型渐渐缩小了。

With its untold depths, couldn't the sea keep alive such huge specimens of life from another age, this sea that never changes while the land masses undergo almost continuous alteration?

在深不可测的海洋底下，为什么不能保存从前另一时代的巨大生物的品种呢？

Couldn't the heart of the ocean hide the last-remaining varieties of these titanic species, for whom years are centuries and centuries millennia?

海洋内部，为什么不能藏有那些巨大生物的最后变种，以一世纪为一年，以一千年为一世纪的那些巨大品种呢？