2318 Reptiles. 



When a doctrine is assumed to be fanciful, people seldom take the trouble to in- 

 quire into its history and merits. This may account for the sea-serpent being com- 

 monly confounded with a very different prodigy, too exacting in its claims for the 

 most extravagant credulity of modern days to regard with favour. As seen above, its 

 name and that of kraken are popularly used as synonymous. And nevertheless, Pon- 

 toppidan, Bishop of Bergen, whose 'Natural History of Norway' (translated into 

 English in 1755) is the usual standard of authority on both subjects, treats of them 

 separately in appropriate sections of his work. Of the kraken he says, " I come now 

 to the third, and incontestably the largest sea-monster in the world : it is called kraken, 

 krasen, or, as some name it, krabben, that word being applied by way of eminence to 

 this creature." Its back or upper part he describes as truly gigantic, being a mile and 

 a half or more in circumference, and it is provided with limbs so strong as to be able 

 to pull boats and the smaller sailing craft under water. Some deem the original of 

 this story to have been a Sepia or Medusa of enormous size ; others set it down for 

 an optical illusion ; Pontoppidan himself thinks that " in all probability it may be 

 reckoned of the polypi or of the starfish kind." One cannot help being reminded, on 

 reading the above, of the passage in Milton where he compares Satan, " prone on the 

 flood," to 



" That sea-beast 

 Leviathan, which God of all his works 

 Created hugest that swim the ocean stream ; 

 Him haply slumb'ring on the Norway foam, 

 The pilot of some small night-founder' d skiff 

 Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell, 

 With fixed anchor in his scaly rind 

 Moors by his side under the lee, while night 

 Invests the sea, and wished-for mora delays." 



Commentators have been divided in opinion whether Milton supposed the leviathan to 

 be a crocodile or a whale. The former idea derives little support from the text ; the 

 whale, which has only lately been divested of its " scaly rind," puts forward more 

 plausible pretensions: nevertheless, the vast bulk of the creature alluded to, and its 

 position, " slumbering on the Nonvay foam," suggest the inquiry whether the poet may 

 not have had in his mind a tradition of the kraken. I may mention here that the 

 Norwegian bishop believed that the leviathan of Job and Isaiah had been detected in the 

 sea-serpent. Of the latter animal Pontoppidan says, " The sea-ormen, the sea-snake, 

 Serpens marinus magnus, called by some in this country the Aale Tust, is a wonder- 

 ful and terrible sea-monster, which extremely deserves to be taken notice of. This 

 creature, particularly in the North Sea, continually keeps himself in the bottom of the 

 water, except in the months of July and August, which is their spawning time, and 

 then they come to the surface in calm weather, but plunge into the water again as 

 soon as the wind raises the least wave." He assures us that there were hundreds of 

 experienced and credible fishermen in Norway who could testify to their having an- 

 nually seen such animals, and that the traders from the North were as much surprised 

 to hear of any doubt being entertained of their existence as if they were asked 

 " whether there be such things as eels or cod." 



It would serve little purpose to occupy these pages with mere copies of the pub- 

 lished narratives and deposition tending to prove the existence of the animal under 



