THE KRAKEN. 355 



The belief in the existence of gigantic cuttles is an 

 ancient one. Aristotle mentions it, and Pliny tells of an 

 enormous polypus which at Carteia, in Grenada an old 

 and important Roman colony near Gibraltar used to 

 come out of the sea at night, and carry off and devour 

 salted tunnies from the curing depots on the shore ; and 

 adds that when it was at last killed, the head of it (they 

 used to call the body the head, because in swimming it 

 goes in advance) was found to weigh 700 Ibs. ^Elian re- 

 cords a similar incident, and describes his monster as 

 crushing in its arms the barrels of salt fish to get at the 

 contents. These two must have been octopods, if they 

 were anything ; the word " polypus " . thus especially 

 designates it, and moreover, the free-swimming cuttles and 

 squids would be helpless if stranded on the shore. Some 

 of the old writers seem to have aimed rather at making their 

 histories sensational than at carefully investigating the 

 credibility or the contrary of the highly coloured reports 

 brought to them. These were, of course, gross exaggera- 

 tions, but there was generally a substratum of truth in 

 them. They were based on the rare occurrence of speci- 

 mens, smaller certainly, but still enormous, of some known 

 species, and in most cases the worst that can be said of 

 their authors is that they were culpably careless and fool- 

 ishly credulous. 



Unhappily, so lenient a judgment cannot be passed on 

 some comparatively recent writers. Denys de Montfort, 

 half a century later than Pontoppidan, not only professed 

 to believe in the Kraken, but also in the existence of 

 another gigantic animal distinct from it ; a colossal poulpe, 

 or octopus, compared with which Pliny's was a mere 

 pigmy. In a drawing fitter to decorate the outside of a 

 showman's caravan at a fair than seriously to illustrate a 



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