GIGANTIC CUTTLE-FISH. 
115 
and this incontestably indicates that the creature belonged to 
the division of the Calamaries. The suckers of this specimen 
are described by Pliny as resembling small basins, and no 
mention being made of claws or hooks in association with them, 
it may be further inferred that this terrible monster was more 
or less closely allied to Loligo and Ommastrephes. The manner 
in which it is said to have driven away the dogs by the terror 
of its breath, and to have used its formidable arms as clubs 
against its aggressors, before it was finally overpowered and 
despatched by spears and tridents, with other extraordinary 
attributes assigned to the animal, necessarily bear on their face 
the stamp of exaggeration. 
From the Eoman period until the commencement of the 
seventeenth century and the spreading of learning and civilisa- 
tion to the northern and western states of Europe, no record of the 
existence of these mighty ocean monsters appears to have been 
preserved ; but from this latter date up to the present time, 
we find much fragmentary and disconnected evidence for con- 
sideration. The deep fiords and rock-bound coast-line of Scan- 
dinavia appear to have been a more than ordinarily favoured 
resort of many varieties of large Cephalopoda, and hence it is 
that among the Scandinavian legends and traditions we find 
associated the wildest fabrications extant concerning the habits 
and proportions of these animals. In the year 1639 we have 
an authenticated record of a gigantic cephalopod captured on 
the coast of Zeeland, and of another of colossal size stranded on 
the rocks in the Grulf of Ulwangen, in 1680. This last ex- 
ample, which is authenticated by Friis, appears to have been 
a large Poulpe, or Octopus, rather than a ten-armed Calamary, 
and probably one similar to this supplied the material out of 
which that most terrible and prodigious of monsters, the 
“ Kraken,” was produced a century earlier by Olaus Magnus, 
Archbishop of Upsala, followed by Pontoppidan, Bishop of 
Bergen, in 1754. This stupendous production of human ima- 
gination was described as resembling an ordinary Octopus, but 
of such gigantic size that a whole regiment of soldiers was re- 
ported to have been able to execute manoeuvres on its back. 
The title of the largest of living animals, “ das grosste Thier 
in der Welt” was given to the Kraken by Pontoppidan, who 
further relates of this formidable monster, “The Norwegian 
fishermen sometimes find unexpected shallows when a short dis- 
tance out at sea, the depth suddenly diminishing from one 
hundred fathoms to twenty or thirty. Then they know that 
the Kraken is rising, and immediately retreat. His back first 
appears, looking like a number of small islands ; his arms rise 
above the surface like the masts of a vessel, and are said to have 
power to grasp the largest man-of-war and pull it to the bottom.” 
