the nature of it is, that it agrees with other living creatures in the way of contracting, and dilating itself: yet some are immovable from rocks, and if they be broken off at the Roots, they grow again; some are movable from place to place; and these are found in huge plenty on the foresaid shores. They are fed with mud, small fish, and oysters. When they are alive, they are black, as they are when they are wet.”
The Kraken.
This enormous monster, peculiar to the Northern Seas, is scarcely a fable, because huge Calamaries are not infrequently seen. Poor Pontoppidan has often been considered a Danish Ananias, but there are authentic accounts of these enormous Cuttle-fish; for instance, in 1854, one was stranded at the Skag, in Jutland, which was cut in pieces by the fishermen in order to be used as bait, and filled many wheelbarrows. Another, either in 1860 or 1861, was stranded between Hillswick and Scalloway, on the west of Scotland, and its tentacles
were sixteen feet long, the pedal arms about half as long, and its body seven feet. The French ship Alecton, on 30th November 1861, between Madeira and Teneriffe, slipped a rope with a running knot over an enormous calamary, but only brought a portion on board, the body breaking off. It was estimated at being sixteen to eighteen feet in length, without counting its arms. The legend of its sinking ships and taking sailors from them is common to many countries, even the Chinese and Japanese thus depicting them.
Olaus Magnus gives us a graphic picture of a huge Polyp, thus seizing a sailor, and dragging him from his ship in spite of all his efforts to prevent him. On the
[next page] is a huge calamary shown with a man in its clutches. This is both in Gesner and Aldrovandus. But this terror to mariners had its master in the Conger eel. Gesner, who has taken his picture from some description of the World, introduces it as a Sea-Serpent; but Aristotle says that “the Congers devour the Polypi, which cannot adhere to them on account of the
smoothness of their surface.” Magnus also speaks of the antipathy between the two.