THE GREA T SEA SERPENT. 
59 
their own safety to be able, during the short space of time 
occupied by an affair, which all happened in a few seconds, 
to observe accurately their terrible assailant, they naturally 
conjecture that it must have been a snake. It was pro- 
bably a gigantic calamary, such as we now know exist, 
and the dead carcases of which have been found in the 
locality where the event depicted is supposed to have taken 
place. The presumed body of the serpent was one of the arms 
of the squid, and the two rows of suckers thereto belonging 
are indicated in the illustration by the medial line traversing 
its whole length (intended to represent a dorsal fin) and 
the double row of transverse septa, one on each side of it. 
In Fig. 13 an enormous lobster is in the act of similarly 
dragging overboard from a vessel a man whom it has seized 
by the arm with one of its great claws. From the crude 
image of a lobster having eight minor claws and two larger 
ones, to that of a cuttle having eight minor arms and two 
longer ones, the transition is not great ; and I believe that 
this also is a pictorial misrepresentation of a casualty 
by the attack of a calamary similar to that above de- 
scribed, possibly another view of the same incident. The 
idea is that of a sea animal capable of suddenly seizing and 
grasping a man, and we must remember that we have 
evidence, in the writings of Pontoppidan and others, that, 
even two centuries later than Olaus Magnus, the Norse- 
men's knowledge of the cuttles was exceedingly vague and 
indistinct. Any one who has seen, as I frequently have at 
the Brighton Aquarium, and as they doubtless had whilst 
lobster-catching, the threatening and ferocious manner in 
which a lobster will brandish, and, if I may use the term, 
gnash " its claws at an intruding hand, even if held above 
the surface of the water, can well imagine a party of fisher- 
men discussing such a tragic occurrence as the foregoing, 
