It is natural that animals really monstrous should be magnified by the fears of those who have seen or encountered them, and still further magnified afterwards by tradition. Some specimens of cuttle-fish which have been captured wholly, or in part, indicate that this creature sometimes attains such dimensions that but little magnifying would be needed to suggest even the tremendous proportions of the fabulous kraken. In 1861, the French war-steamer _Alecton_ encountered a monstrous cuttle, on the surface of the sea, about 120 miles north-east of Teneriffe. The crew succeeded in slipping a noose round the body, but unfortunately the rope slipped, and, being arrested by the tail fin, pulled off the tail. This was hauled on board, and found to weigh over 40 lbs. From a drawing of the animal, the total length without the arms was estimated at 50 feet, and the weight at 4000 lbs., nearly twice the weight of Pliny’s monstrous cuttle-fish, long regarded as fabulous. In one respect this creature seems to have been imperfect, the two long arms usually possessed by cuttle-fish of the kind being wanting. Probably it had lost these long tentacles in a recent encounter with some sea enemy, perhaps one of its own species. Quite possibly it may have been such recent mutilation which exposed this cuttle-fish to successful attack by the crew of the _Alecton_. A cuttle-fish of about the same dimensions was encountered by two fishermen in 1873, in Conception Bay, Newfoundland. When they attacked it, the creature threw its long arms across the boat, but the fishermen with an axe cut off these tentacles, on which the cephalopod withdrew in some haste. One of the arms was preserved, after it had lost about 6 feet of its length. Even thus reduced it measured 19 feet; and as the fishermen estimate that the arm was struck off about 10 feet from the body, it follows that the entire length of the limb must have been about 35 feet. They estimated the body at 60 feet in length and 5 feet in diameter—a monstrous creature! It was fortunate for these fishermen that they had an axe handy for its obtrusive tentacles, as with so great a mass and the great propulsive power possessed by all cephalopods, it might readily have upset their small boat. Once in the water, they would have been at the creature’s mercy—a quality which, by all accounts, the cuttle-fish does not possess to any remarkable extent. Turn we, however, from the half fabulous woman-fish, and the exaggeratedly monstrous cuttle-fish, to the famous sea-serpent, held by many to be the most utterly fabulous of all fabled creatures, while a few, including some naturalists of distinction, stoutly maintain that the creature has a real existence, though whether it be rightly called a sea-serpent or not is a point about which even believers are extremely doubtful.