Cuttlefish Yarns 1 37 



a few details, such as that the arms were thirty feet 

 long, and so thick that a man's arms could hardly 

 meet round them at their bases, these arms being 

 provided with acetabulae large as basins holding four 

 or five gallons. Now, with the sole exception of the 

 burglarious habit of this Cuttle-fish, which if true has 

 certainly been discontinued by the creature's descen- 

 dants, these details are not very wide of possible and 

 probable truth, and indeed, well within the truth as 

 regards size of many that have been seen and described 

 of late years. 



But coming down to mediaeval times, such writers 

 as Paulinus (who thinks that the great Cuttle must 

 be a vast crab), Bartholinus, Athanasius Kircher, 

 Olaus Magnus, and Pontoppidan, Bishop of Bergen, 

 we find quite a different style of writing, and a steep 

 descent into utter inaccuracy. Not being gifted with 

 either the literary ability or the judiciai restraint of 

 the pagan writers, these Northern litterateurs launched 

 into the wildest fables, and supplemented their literary 

 fancies by such outrageous caricatures that ordinary 

 minds very justly recoiled from them, feeling that 

 they could not be true. For instance, Pontoppidan, 

 though a bishop, was the author of a monstrous tale 

 built up from the simple story of some fishermen, who 

 undoubtedly did come across the body of a vast 

 Cephalopod in the North Sea, and related their ex- 

 periences to him. No doubt they exaggerated, that 

 was only natural in them, but Pontoppidan's story is 

 wild as the Avatar of the Fish from the Mahabharata. 



Very briefly his version was this : that a fleet of 

 ships while at sea sighted an island where no island 

 should be, and determining to explore this strange 

 land, anchored their vessels and landed. When 

 suddenly, to their horror, there arose around the island 



