422 PLINY'S NATURAL HISTORY. [Book DL 



with dried brine, and exhaled a most dreadful stench. Who 

 could have expected to find a polypus there, or could have re- 

 cognized it as such under these circumstances ? They really 

 thought that they were joining "battle with some monster, for 

 at one instant, it would drive off the d,ogs by its horrible 

 fumes, 53 and lash at them with the extremities of its feelers ; 

 while at another, it would strike them with its stronger arms, 

 giving blows with so many clubs, as it were ; and it was only 

 with the greatest difficulty that it could be dispatched with 

 the aid of a considerable number of three-pronged fish-spears. 

 The head of this animal was shewn to Lucullus ; it was in 

 size as large as a cask of fifteen amphorae, and had a beard, 54 

 to use the expressions of Trebius himself, which could hardly 

 be encircled with both arms, full of knots, like those upon a club, 

 and thirty feet in length ; the suckers or calicules, 55 as large as 

 an urn, resembled a basin in shape, while the teeth again were 

 of a corresponding largeness : its remains, which were care- 

 fully preserved as a curiosity, weighed seven hundred pounds. 

 The same author also informs us, that specimens of the ssepia 

 and the loligo have been thrown up on the same shores of a 

 size fully as large : in our own seas 66 the loligo is sometimes 

 found five cubits in length, and the saepia, two. These ani- 

 mals do not live beyond two years. 



CHAP. 49. THE SAILING NATJPLIUS. 



Mucianus also relates that he had seen, in the Propontis, 

 another curious resemblance to a ship in full sail. 57 There is 



53 " Afflatu terribili." This, as Hardouin says, may either mean its 

 bad smell, or stinking water, ejected from its canal. 



54 Its arms or feelers. The amphora, as a measure of capacity, held 

 about nine English gallons. 



55 u Caliculis;" literally, " little glasses." Its " acetabula," or suckers, 

 are so called from their peculiar shape. 



56 Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B. iv. c. 2, says the same ; but, as Hardouin 

 observes, he must mean the Ionian sea. 



57 Cuvier says, that this is only a reproduction, under another name, and 

 with other details, of the story of the nautilus or argonauta ; but under the 

 impression that the polyp is not the animal which owns the shell, but is 

 only its associate. It has also been asserted in modern times, he says, that 

 the polyp has seized this shell by force from some other animal, in order 

 to convert it into its boat; but the opinion has not been adopted, as the 

 shell of the nautilus has been never found in the possession of any other 

 animal. 



