24 
forms existing in the submarine world hitherto unthought of. To con¬ 
tinue the description in the language of Beale, “ These creatures—en¬ 
dowed with hearing, seeing, touch, smell, and taste—are second to no 
inhabitant of the waters in the complex structure of their organs. Be¬ 
sides these senses, they possess the remarkable power of adhesion to the 
surfaces of bodies by means of the acetabula or suckers which line the 
inner surface of their tentacula. In addition to all this, the sepia possess 
the rudiments of fins, which in the sepia octopus are elongated beyond 
the length of the body, terminating in a thick cylindrical portion covered 
with numerous suckers, and in some cases with a row of sharp claws 
added. By means of these the animals can fix themselves, as by anchors, 
firmly to rocks during the agitation of the waters. Their eyes are phos¬ 
phoric, they are amphibious; they swim with their heads behind, and 
walk with it downwards.” They are of all sizes, from the microscopic 
form to those enormous dimensions which more particularly entitle them 
to this notice. Pliny spoke of the colossal cuttle fish as polypi; he de¬ 
scribed them as having bodies as large as a barrel, and as infesting the 
artificial fish-reservoirs on the coast of Sicily. His account is confirmed 
by modern naturalists. Swainson saw specimens on the coast of Sicily, 
whose tentacula at the base were as thick as a man’s leg ; and we 
shudder while reading Sir Grenville Temple’s narrative of the dreadful 
death of a Sardinian captain at Jerbeh, who perished in the horrid em¬ 
braces of one of these monsters, while bathing, and was found drowned in 
four feet water, his limbs strongly bound together by its tentacula. These 
are the creatures so dreaded by the Polynesian divers for shells; and 
though the multitudes which are found about the shores of the Southern 
seas do not exceed greatly our own specimens, there are strong grounds 
for believing that, in the depths of the great ocean, this race realize the 
proverbial saying of fishermen, “ that the cuttle fish is the largest fish 
that swims in the sea.’’ 
Denis Montfort, an old writer on the mollusca (but whose work we 
have not met with), mentions several instances of the appearance of this 
colossus of the deep, and gives at length the story referred to by Sir J. 
Jardine in his chapter on the Kraken in the Naturalists’ Library. This 
account also appears in full in an article on the sea serpent in the second or 
third bound volume of Blackwood’s Magazine, and the catastrophe is re¬ 
lated with the circumstantiality of truth. The circumstances are briefly 
as follows:—Dens (the name of the navigator), being becalmed off the 
coast of Africa, availed himself of the opportunity to have the sides of his 
vessel scraped; and while his crew were thus engaged, this monster of the 
