St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1893-08-12
FABLES or THE SEA.


Extravagsst Stories that Have Beea Teal
of Dealssns Of the Deep.
The witch-hunter Bodin, In hi
'Cyclopedia Of Magic, " informs US thai
the last faun was caught in l:s., ant
adds that, lowing to the spread Of un
belief, fairies, nowaday >, hide in dark
est caverns:" hut il must be admitted
that quite number of marine bugbears
and chimcras have managed to survive
the dawn of modern science.
There is species of mollusks with
prchcnsilc legs that can be closed like
the fingers of hand, but the difference
between the size of the geological octo
pus and the cight-srned sca-ogre Of
Victor Hugo is about as glaring as that
between the vampire bat (wcight some
three ounces) and the ghoul vampire ol
Turkish folklore.
OF the thirty odd varieties of cephalo.
pods found in the seas Of the tropics,
twenty-five are not much larger than
star-fish, and Of the rest only three
species attain . size at all formidable,
even in appearance, though the expan-
sion and contraction of the Shiny tenta-
cles are not a pleasant sight when a
captured specimen wrigglcs about the
deck of a tidy steamer. The octopus Of
the northern seas is a mere peck Of
jelly, about an inch and half in
length. and quite rs harmless rs .
Spanish man-of-war." !" rising and sink.
ing in the ripple Of the surf.
The elder Pliny tells some tough
stories about a creature he calls a poly
pus; but even liugo's ''devil-fish" night
mare is outdone by the kraken yarns
of the Scandinavian sailors. The ORTIZ
odox krake - the Morse fire-side tales,
according TO Prof. karlson. was =
monster of such portcntous size that
one of its tentacles protruding over tho
cliffs of the sca-shore was apt to be
mistaken for the trunk of q stranded
tree. till il suddenly rose and, twisting
about the legs of the unwary traveller,
flung him far out to sea, where the
body of the monster lay coiled mp at
the bottom of q marine abyss. Fisher
mems boats and even sailing vessels Of
the largest size were said to have been
drawn down SO suddenly that the vic
Tins had hardly time to shrick out the
name of their patron saint before the
waves closed over their heads
a color of plausibility was supposed
TO have been given to these traditions
by tho fact that large-sized octopus
was washed ashore ON the west coast
of Newfoundland, but subsequent in
vcstigation proved that the specimen
in question was rs dead as n dodo, and
had evidently been carried northward
with the current of the gulf stream.
A south sea sharks power of diges-
ton can hardly be exaggerated, but
the prescriptive title of . ''tyrant of
the sea-" clearly belongs to other sea-
monsters. for instance, the grampus or
killer-whale that will attack walrus
with the fury Of bulldog, and has
been known to rout whole ''rootery"
of sea-lions. The Greenland variety at
tain length of thirty feet and can
swallow seal as shark would dcvour
a slice of bacon, and in its parOxysms
of appetite has been known to tear
large pieces Of flesh out Of the living
body of its large relative. the white
whale, which il sometimes kills by
driving II into the bay Of a shallow
90 s.ef
Not poets only, but the authors of
fiction travels, continue to repeat the
fable about the color changes, Of the
dying dolphin Tho fact is that the
color of the Dclphinus dclphis resem-
blcs the blackish-gray hue of its cousin.
the common porpoise, and does not I'M
dcrgo the slightest change after death
till the skin becomes wrinkled and be-
gins to drop OF in fakes. Something
to the phenomena Of the
poetic fiction is, however, actually apt
to occur in the dying agony Of the cory.
phene, a creature rs different from q
dolphin rs shark Is from . seal
And what a pity that even Coleridge's
ancient mariner should have endan-
gered the fate of his messmatcs by SO
gratuitous an outrage rs the killing Of
= stormy" petrcl Mother Carey's
chicken is one Of Jack Tarr's special
pets and follows his ship farther than
any. bird but the albatross; but 1T the
approach of q gale it seeks the shelter
Of the shore, like all other sea-birds,
and its sudden appearance in unusual
or at more than ordinary
distance from land is an omen of fair
rather than of an impending
l. Oswald, in n. Y. Ledger.