100 THE OCTOPUS. 



is constantly misciuoted by authors who have never read his work/'^ 

 and who, one after another, have copied from their predecessors 

 erroneous statements concerning him. More than half a century 

 before him Christian Francis Paullinus,t a physician and naturalist 

 of Eisenach, who evinced in his writings an admiration of the 

 marvellous rather than of the useful, had described as resembling 

 Gesner's " Heracleoticon," a monstrous animal which occasionally 

 rose from the sea on the coasts of Lapland and Finmark, and 

 which was of such enormous dimensions that a regiment of 

 soldiers could conveniently manoeuvre on its back. Pontoppidan 

 was not a fabricator of falsehoods ; but, in collecting evidence 

 relating to the " great beasts" living in ''the great and wide sea,'* 

 was influenced, as he tells us, by " a desire to extend the popular 

 knowledge of the glorious works of a beneficent Creator." His 

 fault, or mistake, was that he gave too much credence to old 

 narratives and traditions of floating islands and sea monsters, and 

 to the superstitious beliefs and exaggerated statements of ignorant 

 fishermen. If those who abuse him had lived in his day they 

 would probably have done the same. The tone of his concluding 

 remarks is not that of an intentional deceiver and knave. He 

 says he "believes the accounts given to be true and well attested," 

 and that he " leaves it to future writers to complete what he has 

 imperfectly sketched out, by further experience, which is always 

 the best instructor." No wonder, therefore, that his evident 

 sincerity and the respectability of episcopal advocacy obtained 

 belief for the fable of the Kraken. 



The Norwegian bishop was a conscientious, if over-credulous 

 man : but the same cannot be said of Denys de Montfort, who, 

 half a century later not only professed to believe in the existeilfce 

 of the Kraken, but also of another gigantic animal distinct from 

 it; a " colossal /^^//^t'," or octopus, compared with which Pliny's 

 was a mere pigmy. In a drawing fitter to decorate the outside of 



* " Natural History of Nonvay," cap. 8. A.D. 1754. 

 t Born 1643 ; died 1 7 12. 



