Research source

SOMETIME NATURALIST OF THE BRIGHTON AQUARIUM AND AUTHOR OF 'THE OCTOPUS, OR THE DEVIL-FISH OF FICTIO

Date of account: Published 1883
Source: Sea Monsters Unmasked, and Sea Fables Explained
Reference: Sea Monsters Unmasked, and Sea Fables Explained · selected passage 25
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

Unhappily so lenient a judgment cannot be passed on some comparatively recent writers

Published source text

Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.

Source passage

Source text · mention only

Unhappily so lenient a judgment cannot be passed on some comparatively recent writers. Denys de Montfort, half a century later than Pontoppidan, not only professed to believe in the Kraken, but also in the existence of another gigantic animal distinct from it; a colossal _poulpe_, or octopus, compared with which Pliny's was a mere pigmy. In a drawing fitter to decorate the outside of a showman's caravan at a fair than seriously to illustrate a work on natural history,[10] he depicted this tremendous cuttle as throwing its arms over a three masted vessel, snapping off its masts, tearing down the yards, and on the point of dragging it to the bottom, if the crew had not succeeded in cutting off its immense limbs with cutlasses and hatchets. De Montfort had good opportunities of obtaining information, for he was at one time an assistant in the geological department of the Museum of Natural History, in Paris; and wrote a work on conchology,[11] besides that already referred to. But it appears to have been his deliberate purpose to cajole the public; for it is reported that he exclaimed to M.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This source supplies historical scientific, skeptical or conventional context. Its terminology and conclusions may not reflect current scholarship.

Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

Lattice uses this as an alternative-explanation source, not as an automatic dismissal of testimony. Claims still need to be compared with the actual evidence and current knowledge.

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