SEA MONSTERS UNMASKED. 



THE KRAKEN. 



IN the legends and traditions of northern nations, stories of 

 the existence of a marine animal of such enormous size 

 that it more resembled an island than an organised being 

 frequently found a place. It is thus described in an 

 ancient manuscript (about A.D. 1180), attributed to the 

 Norwegian King Sverre, and the belief in it has been 

 alluded to by other Scandinavian writers from an early 

 period to the present day. It was an obscure and 

 mysterious sea-monster, known as the Kraken, whose form 

 and nature were imperfectly understood, and it was pecu- 

 liarly the object of popular wonder and superstitious 

 dread. 



Eric Pontoppidan, the younger, Bishop of Bergen, and 

 member of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Copenhagen, 

 is generally, but unjustly, regarded as the inventor of the 

 semi-fabulous Kraken, and is constantly misquoted by 

 authors who have never read his work,* and who, one after 

 another, have copied from their predecessors erroneous state- 

 ments concerning him. More than half a century before him, 

 Christian Francis Paullinus,t a physician and naturalist of 



* * Natural History of Norway.' A.D. 1751. 

 t Born 1643; died 1712. 



