294 AMERICAN JOURNAL 



A WELL-ABUSED MOLLUSK. 



BY H. CROSSE. 

 Translated from the " Journal de Conchyliologie" for April, 1866, 



BY FKAUK DAULTE, CINCINNATI, OHIO. 



The Poulp lias ever "been unfortunate in his relations with 

 the human race. Fishermen hate him on account of the con- 

 siderable quantity of small fishes, Crustacea and inollusca de- 

 stroyed by him, to their detriment. Instead of seeing in him 

 a colleague, — a fisherman by trade like themselves, using but 

 loyal means of competition, perfectly justifiable in such an 

 era of commercial liberty as ours is, — they consider him ra- 

 ther as a pirate, unworthy of mercy, who must be checked: 

 and they lose no opportunity of capturing and destroying him. 

 Moreover, during the bathing-season, they take a mischievous 

 pleasure in relating to inquisitive Parisians (and for them 

 every bather is a Parisian, whether he comes from Carcassonne 

 or Beunos Ayres) the most dreadful stories about this mol- 

 lusk. If to this be added, that from Pliny to Denys de Mont- 

 fort, the most boasting of modern naturalists, scores of au- 

 thors have taken pleasure in reproducing, with exaggeration, 

 the absurd tales concerning the Poulp in old popular tradi- 

 tion, no wonder that so many persons fear almost as much as 

 they do the shark, this cephalopod, whose odd organization, 

 and his long arms furnished with sucking apparatus, renders 

 him so odious to persons unacquainted with Natural History. 

 Thus Denys de Montfort, in one of his works, after having 

 related the story, as terrific as unlikely, of a gigantic Poulp, 

 which folds its arms round a large ship, and threatens to carry 

 her down in the abyss of the deep, adds, in corroboration of 

 his tale, a plate representing this sad event, and more worthy 

 of being displayed on a quack's sign at a market show, than 

 in the writings of a trustworthy naturalist. He then relates, 

 in good earnest, the battles which he himself fought with 

 Poulps in the neighborhood of Havre, and which he won only 

 through his tried valor and the invaluable help of a huge bull- 



