96 VOYAGE INTO 



legs begin ; between the beginning of his legs he had soft 

 cavities. 



His legs are, where they begin, thick, and have in the mid- 

 dle a longish hollow or gutter, which feeleth soft ; on the 

 brim they are adorned with scales, that lye one over the 

 other, no otherwise than if they were a row of coral, but 

 underneath the scales are twisted, and have in the middle 

 forwards small black strokes, but the scales lye over one 

 another like unto the plaits of the crawfish. Besides, where 

 the legs come out of the body, they spread themselves double 

 into twigs, and are, as is said before, hollow in the middle, 

 until the place where they divide themselves into several 

 branches, and so grow slenderer by degrees. 



The undermost small branches are scaley all round, but 

 not twisted like ropes ; they are sharp-pointed on their ends 

 like unto the feet of a spider, wherefore the seamen call them 

 sea-spiders. When they swim in the water they hold their 

 legs together, and so they row along. I had one of this sort 

 that was a span long, from the extremity of one foot to the 

 other ; but this I have delineated is less. The biggest are 

 the handsomest for colour. They dye soon after they are 

 out of the water, and when they are dying they bend their 

 legs towards the mouth. The body, when it is dead, soon 

 breaks to jiieces, which is the reason that I could not keep 

 the great ones. Hondeleiius, in his book of fish, hath deli- 

 neated one of this shape, but the same is not the same species, 

 for his is black ; neither do I find the plaits in his, except 

 he that drew it did not observe them. 



Some of both these sorts I got on the fifth of July, before 

 the Weihegat, when a whale made his escape from us, be- 

 cause the line whereunto the harpoon was fastened was 

 entangled about a rock : on this they hung, and so I got 

 them alive. 



