CHAPTER X. 



GIGANTIC CUTTLE-FISHES. 



The history of the ancient belief in the existence of gigantic 

 cephalopods is some\yhat obscure. All that we know of it is from 

 passages in the works of a few old Greek and Latin authors, and 

 a series of Scandinavian traditions. I have already referred to 

 the "monstrous polypus" mentioned by Pliny,* which, at Cartoeia, 

 in Grenada, used to come out of the sea at night, and carry off 

 salted tunnies from the curing depots on the shore, and also to 

 the incident recorded by ^lian,t who describes his monster as 

 crushing up the barrels of salt-fish iq, its arms, to get at the 

 contents. In the legends of northern nations stories of the existence 

 of a marine animal of such enormous size that it more resembled 

 an island than an organised being frequently found a place ; and 

 though the descriptions given of it were wild and extravagant, it is 

 not difficult to recognise in the ill-drawn and distorted portrait the 

 attempted likeness of one of the cephalopoda. Olaus Magnus X 

 relates many wondrous narratives of sea-monsters, — tales which 

 had gathered and accumulated marvels as they were passed on 

 from generation to generation in oral history, and which he took 

 care to bequeath to his successors undeprived of any of their 

 fascination. 



*Eric Pontoppidan, the younger. Bishop of Bergen, is generally, 

 but unjustly, regarded as the inventor of the fabulous Kraken, and 



* "Naturalis Histonae," lib. ix,, cap. 30. A.d. 77. 

 + Lib. iii., cap. 6. De anim. a.d. 220 to 250. 



+ " Historia de gentibus Septentrionalibus." a.d. 1555. Olaus Magnus, 

 archdeacon, is frequently mistaken for Johan Magnus, Archbishop of Upsala. 



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