THE KRAKEN. 336 



Nordland, records that one of these creatures was 

 stranded among the rocks in the year 1680: the 

 carcass was a long time in decaying ; it filled up a 

 great part of the Narrow Channel, and made it al- 

 most impassible on account of its intolerable stench. 

 We must now terminate our account of this ex- 

 traordinary animal, and shall do so in the words of 

 a distinguished Naturalist, who, with great ability, 

 ,has illustrated the subject, and whose able paper 

 we recommend to the attention of our readers.* 

 " The different authorities we have quoted are, we 

 trust, sufficient to establish the existence of an enor- 

 mous inhabitant of the deep, (the Cuttle-fish,) pos- 

 sessed of characters which, in a remarkable degree, 

 distinguish it from every other creature with 

 which we are familiar ; and the agreement which 

 may be observed in its descriptions, when corn- 

 pared with those of the celebrated Kraken, is suffi- 

 ciently obvious to warrant the inference which 

 we are now prepared to draw That the great 

 Norwegian animal thus named is to be considered 

 not as a wild and groundless chimera, but as either 

 identical with, or nearly allied to, this colossal cuttle 

 fish. It must be confessed that many of the ac- 

 counts to which we have referred, if considered 

 singly, are much too vague and indefinite to form 

 the foundation of any opinion ; but it is the general 

 import and tendency of the whole combined which 

 should be considered. In this view, it would be 



* Black wood's Mag vol ii. and iii. 



