144. The Squid-hound.
The sea-snake has been found, and confirmed the credit of Egede (whose word I never doubted) and of Pontoppidan. We shall have the kraken next. A writer in the Naval Chronicle, who creates for the old bishop the new diocese of Pont-oppidun, advertises for one "I have heard," he says, "such accounts of the squid-hound from people who have been on the southern whale fishery, and at Newfoundland, as certainly reduce all the bishop's crimes to a charge of exaggeration." Some parts of one, he had been told, were at Dartmouth, and he believed that naturalists were afraid to mention this great fish, lest they should be laughed at for their credulity. He, however, signing himself Fides, requests any of his readers to send him some well authenticated particulars of this monstrous animal. I have seen no answer to his request, and wish therefore by thus repeating it, to increase the chance of obtaining one.