LECTURE X. 137 



length ; and that the natives of the Indian isles, 

 when sailing in their canoes, always take care to 

 be provided with hatchets, in order to cut off im- 

 mediately the arms of such of those animals as 

 happen to fling them over the sides of the canoe, 

 Jest they should pull it under water and sink it. 

 This has been considered as a piece of credulity in 

 Mr. Pennant, unworthy of a sober naturalist. It 

 is certain however that a great variety of appa- 

 rently authentic evidences seem to confirm the 

 reality of this account. The ancients, it is evi- 

 dent, acknowledged the existence of animals of 

 the Cuttle-Fish tribe of a most enormous size$ 

 witness the account given by Pliny and others of 

 the large Polypus as he terms it, which used to 

 rob the repositories of salt-fish on the coasts of 

 Carteia, and which, according to his description, 

 had a head of the size of a cask that would hold 

 fifteen amphone ;. arms measuring thirty feet in 

 length, of such a diameter that a man could hardly 

 clasp one of them, and beset with suckers or fasten- 

 ers of the size of large basins that would hold four 

 or five gallons apiece. The existence in short of 

 some enormously large species of the Cuttle-Fish 

 tribe in the Indian and northern seas can hardly be 



