422 plikt's natubal htstoet. [Book IX. 
with dried brine, and exhaled a most dreadful stench. Who 
could have expected to find a polypus there, or could have re- 
cognized it as such under these circumstances ? They really 
thought that they were joining battle with some monster, for 
at one instant, it would drive off the dogs by its horrible 
fumes, and lash at them with the extremities of its feelers ; 
while at another, it would strike them with its stronger arms, 
giving blows with so many clubs, as it were ; and it was only 
with the greatest difficulty that it could be dispatched with 
the aid of a considerable number of three-pronged fish-spears. 
The head of this animal was shewn to Lucullus ; it was in 
size as large as a cask of fifteen ampborse, and had a beard/'^^ 
to use the expressions of Trebius himself, which could hardly 
be encircled with both arms, full of knots, like those upon a club, 
and thirty feet in length ; the suckers or calicules,^^ as large as 
an urn, resembled a basin in shape, while the teeth again were 
of a corresponding largeness : its remains, which were care- 
fully preserved as a curiosity, weighed seven hundred pounds. 
The same author also informs us, that specimens of the saepia 
and the loligo have been thrown up on the same shores of a 
size fully as large : in our own seas ^ the loligo is sometimes 
found five cubits in length, and the saepia, two. These ani- 
mals do not live beyond two years. 
CHAP. 49. — THE SAILING I^-ATIPLnJS. 
Mucianus also relates that he had seen, in the Propontis, 
another curious resemblance to a ship in full sail.^^ There is 
5^ "Afflatu terribili." This, as Hardouin says, may either mean its 
bad smell, or stinking water, ejected from its canal. 
^* Its arms or feelers. The amphora, as a measure of capacity, held 
about nine English gallons. 
^5 "Caliculis;** literally, "little glasses." Its " acetabula," or suckers, 
are so called from their peculiar shape. 
56 Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B. iv. c. 2, says the same ; but, as Hardouin 
observes, he must mean the Ionian sea. 
57 Cuvier says, that this is only a reproduction, under another name, and 
with other details, of the story of the nautilus or argonauta ; but under the 
impression that the polyp is not the animal which owns the shell, but is 
only its associate. It has also been asserted in modern times, he says, that 
the polj^) has seized this shell by force from some other animal, in order 
to convert it into its boat ; but the opinion has not been adopted, as the 
shell of the nautilus has been never found in the possession of any other 
animal. 
