28 
the most singular optical illusions. Seen through the mirage, on a calm 
day, distant vessels are brought near, are elongated, depressed, raised 
in the air, divided, and, in some rare instances, reflected on an opposite 
stratum of air, on the other side of the beholder. Land too distant to 
be seen, according to the laws of perspective and the earth s figure, is 
brought up from below the horizon to the surface, and sometimes appears 
above it in an inverted position, and all this without any visible change in 
the atmospheric medium itself; so that it is only by the effects themselves 
that the unusual refracting condition of the air is recognised. Fish spawn, 
or an unusual assemblage of medusae, seen at some distance, occasionally 
discolour the water so as to produce the appearance of a sand bank, in a 
quarter where none is known to exist.* With regard to the change in the 
soundings, reported by the fishermen, it is possible some such phenomenon 
may have been caused by submarine volcanic eruptions, similar to those 
in our own time, occurring in the Mediterranean, and off the Western 
islands. These are known to be accompanied, also, by the rising to the 
surface of quantities of ashes, and the lighter portions of the ejected 
matter. In this twofold effect of an eruption taking place at the bottom 
of the sea, we can realize many of the circumstances associated with the 
appearance of the kraken; and it is no wmnder, that events so rare, and 
attended by such new phenomena, to the imaginations of the sea-faring 
men of the 17th century, already impregnated with all kinds of sea marvels 
and diablerie, should have presented the terrible conviction of the present 
existence of some portentous monster of the deep. 
We have not met with any recorded appearance of Ponloppidaris kraken 
since his own days, except one referred to in the second volume of Trans¬ 
actions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. It purports that in the year 
1786, certain appearances off the east coast of Scotland were thought to 
betoken the presence of this creature; but from all the particulars which 
have been preserved, they may be satisfactorily believed to have been 
optical phenomena. 
It is usual for naturalists to retire from the further consideration of this 
* A few years ago, a vessel sailing two or three hundred miles to the westward of Africa, 
fell in with a sand-bank, raised apparently some feet above the surface of the sea. As 
nothing of the kind was laid down in his chart, the captain very properly sent a boat 
to examine it. Contrary to all experience of mirage, the bank did not disappear as the 
boat approached, but became more and more defined, until she fairly ran on to it, 
when it was found to be a bank, not of sand indeed, but of dead locusts, laying so thick 
that it projected several inches above the surface, the sea being calm at the time. The 
account was read from a letter written by a person on board the ship, before a society, 
the author of these pages being present, who now narrates it from memory. 
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