GIGANTIC CUTTLE-FISHES. 103 



a showman's caravan at a fair than seriously to illustrate a work 

 •on natural history,* he depicted this tremendous cuttle-fish as 

 throwing its arms over a three-masted vessel, snapping off its 

 masts, tearing down the yards, and on the point of dragging it to the 

 bottom, if the crew had not succeeded in cutting off its immense 

 limbs with cutlasses and hatchets. De Montfort had good 

 opportunities of obtaining information, for he was at one time an 

 assistant in the geological department of the Museum of Natural 

 History in Paris ; and wrote a work on conchology,t besides that 

 already referred to. But it appears to have been his deliberate 

 purpose to cajole the public ; for it is reported that he exclaimed 

 to M. Uefrance : *' If my entangled ship is accepted, I will make 

 my * colossal poulpe ' overthrow a whole fleet." Accordingly we 

 find him gravely declaring \ that one of the great victories of the 

 Eritish navy was converted into a disaster by the monsters which 

 are the subject of his history. He boldly asserted that the six 

 men-of-war captured from the French by Admiral Rodney in the 

 West Indies on the 12th of April 1782, together with four British 

 ships detached from his fleet to convoy the prizes, were all 

 •suddenly engulphed in the waves on the night of the battle under 

 such circumstances as showed that the catastrophe was caused by 

 •colossal cuttle-fishes, and not by a gale or any ordinary casualty. 



Unfortunately for De Montfort the inexorable logic of facts not 

 ■only annihilates his startling theory, but demonstrates the reckless 

 falsity of his plausible statements. The captured vessels did not 

 sink on the night of the action, but were all sent to Jamaica to 

 refit, and arrived there safely. Five months afterwards, however, 

 a convoy of nine line-of-battle-ships (amongst which were 

 Rodney's prizes), one frigate, and about a hundred merchantmen, 

 were dispersed, whilst on their voyage to England, by a violent 



* "Histoire Naturelle generale et particuliere des Mollusques," vol. ii., 

 . P- 256. 



+ *' Conchyliologie Systematique." 



: " Hist. Nat. des Moll," vol. ii., pp. 358 to 368. 



