THE GREAT SEA SERPENT. 245 



infected by them. They cause very great destruc- 

 tion among the Crustacea and other fish, and their 

 hiding-places may be discovered by the proofs of 

 their voracity lying about. They injure the fisher- 

 men, both by destroying the fish and frightening 

 them from the neighbourhood, and the fishermen 

 take their revenge by killing them whenever they 

 get a chance. 



When the Cephalopod attacks its prey, it turns, as 

 it were, on its back ; the sack is held up vertically ; 

 the arms are stretched out, the calamaries are held 

 horizontally, and thus they seize their prey. With 

 the larger kinds, their grasp is irresistible, and the 

 victim soon feels the bite of the terrible parrot's 

 beak, of which the extending arms are the pur- 

 veyors. Men have been killed in this way, and the 

 abundance of these huge jelly fish on the coasts of 

 Greece renders bathing there extremely dangerous, 

 whilst in the Polynesian Islands they are the terror 

 of the divers. The common Cuttle-fish of the Medi- 

 terranean is about two feet long, but there is a 

 species more than three times as large found in the 

 Pacific Ocean. 



It is pretty certain, however, that Cephalopods are 

 in existence which far exceed in bulk the largest 

 proportions which zoological treatises assign to them. 

 Thus Peron found on the shores of Tasmania a 

 Cuttle-fish, the arms of which were from seven to 

 eight inches in diameter, and six to seven feet long. 



