OKiANTlC rErriALftPODS. SI 



bright red color, Avitli a IViiige roiuid it, it liuiig down on botii 

 sides like a carpet on a table, falling back on each side, and 

 faced with white, the crowns and mantle were glorious to behold : 

 This monster had not one bone about him, nor lins nor scales, or 

 feet, but had a smooth skin like a man's belly. It swoom by 

 the lappits of the mantle ; the little head it could dart forth a 

 yard from the great, and draw it in again at pleasure, being like a 

 hawk's beak, and having in the little head two tongues, by which, 

 it is thought, it received all its nourishment : when it was dead 

 and opened, the liver wayed thirty pounds. The man that took 

 it came to Clonmel the fourth of this instant December, with two 

 of the horns in a long box with the little head, and the figure of 

 the fish drawn on a painted cloth, wdiich was the full proportion 

 of it, and he went up to Dublin, with an intent to shew it to the 

 Lord Lieutenant." 



The advent of this animal is thus described in a letter from 

 Thomas Hooke (Dublin) to Mr. John Wickins (London), De- 

 cember 23d, 1673: 



" That in the month of October last, I think about the 1 5th 

 day, he was alone riding by the seaside, at Dingle-I-cosh, and 

 saw a great thing in the sea, which drew his eye towards it, and 

 it came just to him ; when he discerned the horns, it began to 

 look frightfully ; he said he was sometimes afraid to look on it, 

 and when he durst look on it, it was the most splendid sight that 

 he ever saw ; the Horns were so bespangled Avith those Crowns, 

 as he calls them ; they shewed, he saith, like Pearls or precious 

 Stones ; the Horns it could move and Aveild about the Head as a 

 Snail doth, all the ten ; the two long ones it mostly bore for- 

 wards, the other eight mov'd too and fro every way ; when it 

 came to shore its fore parts rested on the shore, and there lay ; 

 He got help after awhile, and when he saw it stirred not to fright 

 them, he got ropes and put them about the hinder parts, and 

 began to draw it on shore, and saw it stirred not to hurt them, 

 they grew bold, and went to pull with their hands on the Horns, 

 but these Crowns so bit them, that they were forced to quit their 

 hold : the crowns had teeth under every one of them, and had a 

 power to fasten on anything that touched them ; they moved the 

 Horns with handspikes, and so being evening they left it on the 

 shore, and came in the morning and found it dead." 

 11 



