ON CEPHALOPODA. 295 
was preserved of the body weighed seven hundred pounds. 
There are other traits still more curious in the history of this 
most marvellous octopus. It was observed at Castera, in 
Beetica, in Spain, and was accustomed to come forth from the 
sea into the reservoirs or depots for salted fish, &c. and de- 
vour those provisions. The pertinacity of its robberies at 
Jength aroused the indignation of the keepers; they built 
very lofty palisades, but all in vain, this persevering polypus 
succeeded in getting over them by taking advantage of a 
neighbouring tree, so that it could not be taken but by the 
sagacity of the dogs, which, having marked it one night as it 
was returning to the sea, intimated the affair to the keepers, 
who were struck with terror and astonishment at the novelty 
of this tremendous spectacle: in truth, the animal was of an 
immeasurable bulk; its colour was changed by the action of 
the brine, and it exhaled a most intolerable odour. Never- 
theless, after a desperate combat with the dogs, which Pliny 
depicts with all the vigour of his poetical style, and by the 
efforts of men armed with tridents, it was at last killed, and 
the head was brought to Lucullus. 
flian also tells us that in the course of time these animals, 
which he, in common with all the ancients, calls polypi, arrive 
at a most extraordinary bulk, so as to equal in size the largest 
cetacea. On this subject he favours us with a story pretty 
nearly similar to that of Trebius, of an octopus which, having 
devastated the magazines of the Iberian merchants, was Je- 
sieged by a great number of persons, and cut in pieces with 
hatchets, just in the same style that wood-men cut down the 
thick branches of trees. 
Aristotle, indeed, tells us that there are polypi whose arms 
are as much as five cubits in length, which would make about 
six feet. But this is a long way behind the narrations of 
Trebius and lian, and falls still shorter of the wonders of 
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