THE GREAT SEA SERPENT. 243 



modern evidence leaves little room for doubting 

 the existence of this creature, whose proportions 

 seem to belong to the pre-Adamite period. The 

 only question is, whether the witnesses have not 

 been guilty of some exaggeration? Whether the 

 fear which the presence of a monster would natu- 

 rally inspire has not caused it to assume proportions 

 still more terrific than those which really belong to 

 it? Terror has a wonderful effect in multiplying 

 feet into yards, and perhaps it has even endowed 

 with the qualities of a living creature some object 

 floating in the distance which, on nearer approach, 

 might have turned out to be something very differ- 

 ent from what it was supposed to be. Not so. All 

 these stories are not mere fables. Even men of 

 science of our own days recognise the existence of 

 the Kraken, only they have given him a learned 

 name, that of Cephalopocl. Let the reader picture 

 to himself a soft, thick, viscous, muscular sack, 

 spherical in some species, and cylindrical or spindle- 

 shaped in others, changing its colours like a chame- 

 leon, containing organs of respiration, an apparatus 

 of circulation, a digestive canal, and a stomach 

 comparable to the crop of a bird ; put upon this 

 sack a round head, furnished with a pair of large 

 eyes, placed laterally, and between them a little 

 tube, serving, not for the nose, but for the excre- 

 mentary canal ; on the top of the head put a mouth, 

 consisting of a circular lip and armed with a pair of 



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