THE FABULOUS KRAKEN. 279 



Cook's first voyage, found the dead carcass of a gigantic cuttle- 

 fish floating between Cape Horn and the Polynesian islands. It 

 was surrounded by aquatic birds, which were feeding on its 

 remains. From the parts of this specimen, which are still 

 preserved in the Hunterian collection, and which have always 

 strongly excited the attention of naturalists, it must have 

 measured at least six feet from the end of the tail to the end of 

 the tentacles. 



Near Van Diemen's Land, Peron saw a sepia about as 

 big as a tun rolling about in the waters. Its enormous arms 

 had the appearance of frightful snakes. Each of these organs 

 was at least seven feet long, and measured seven or eight inches 

 round the base. These well authenticated proportions are truly 

 formidable, and fully justify the dread and abhorrence which 

 the Polynesian divers entertain of those snake-armed monsters 

 of the deep ; but not satisfied with reality, some writers have 

 magnified the size of the cephalopods to fabulous dimensions. 

 Thus Pernetti mentions a colossal cuttle-fish, which, climbing 

 up the rigging, overturned a three-masted ship ; and Pliny 

 notices a similar giant, with arms thirty feet long and a corre- 

 sponding girth. But all this is nothing to the Norwegian kraken, 

 a mass of a quarter of a mile in diameter, and a back covered 

 with a thicket of sea-weeds. When it comes to the surface, 

 which seems to be but rarely the case, it raises its arms mast- 

 high into the air, and, having enjoyed for a time the lovely 

 daylight, sinks slowly back again into abysmal darkness. 

 Fishermen are said to have landed on a kraken, and to have 

 kindled a fire upon the supposed island for the purpose of 

 cooking their dinner. But even a kraken, thick-skinned as 

 he may be, does not like his back to be converted into a 

 hearth, and thus it happened that the treacherous ground 

 gave way under the mistaken mariners, and overwhelmed 

 them in the waters. Strange that the oriental tale of Sinbad 

 the sailor should thus be re-echoed in the wild legends of the 

 north. 



All the dibranchiate cephalopods are destitute of an outward 

 shell, with the sole exception of the Spirula, a small species 

 chiefly found in the South Sea, and of the far more renowned 

 Argonaut, which poets, ancient and modern, have celebrated as 

 the model from which man took the first idea of navigation. 



