GIGANTIC CEPHALOPODS. 99 



frame, when he found that the animal had fixed itself so firmly 

 upon him. He describes its cold slimy grasp as extremely 

 sickening ; and one can well believe him when he says that he 

 loudly called to the captain, who was also searching for shells at 

 some distance, to come to his assistance. The captain, fortu- 

 nately, was soon at hand, and speedily released his companion 

 from the awkward predicament into which he had got himself, 

 by destroying the animal with the boat-knife. The poor Cepha- 

 lopod, however, stuck on to the last, and had to be cut away piece 

 by piece. 



Our readers, probably will think with Mr. Beale, that this 

 affair was sufficiently horrible ; although it sinks into insigni- 

 ficance beside the frightful stories that are told of these animals 

 by some of the early navigators. Modern naturalists, it is true, 

 make short work of these accounts, and set them all down as 

 fabulous ; though it is admitted that Cephalopods of enormous 

 size do exist. It is notorious, indeed, that the pearl-divers of the 

 Indian seas, and the coral-divers of the Mediterranean, are con- 

 stantly liable to be attacked by these monsters, and that occa- 

 sionally they have been carried off in their arms. The largest 

 Cephalopod of which any remains are preserved in our museums 

 was one obtained during Captain Cook's first voyage in the 

 Southern Pacific Ocean. The dead carcass was found floating on 

 the sea, surrounded by aquatic birds, which were feeding on its 

 remains. Comparing the parts of this animal now existing in the 

 museum of the Royal College of Surgeons with those of smaller 

 perfect animals, Professor Owen estimates that its body must 

 have been, at least, four feet long, and its arms three feet more, 

 making seven feet from the end of the body to the points of the 

 tentacles, a length diminutive, indeed, compared with that as- 

 cribed to the fabulous Kraken of Pontoppidan, but still amply 

 sufficient to render a Cephalopod, with its array of suckers, a truly 

 formidable monster. 



In systematic zoology, the Cephalopods stand at the head of the 

 Mollusca, and exhibit many interesting points of analogy to the 

 higher or vertebrate division of the animal world. This advance 

 in organization is much more obvious in one section of the Cepha- 

 lopods than in another, but in both alike it is of a very marked 

 and decisive character. Thus all these animals have the rudiments 

 of a true internal skeleton, and there is a perfect symmetry 



