ABSTRACT
THERE are very many species of sea-monsters. Some are prickly and exceedingly large, as Albertus certifies, covering an area of four acres (Pliny in Bk XVIII, Ch. 3, gives the dimensions of an acre as 240 feet by 120). Some smaller ones have smooth skins and may be caught in the Western and Northern Oceans. 1 That these spread over three acres is maintained by Pliny in Bk IX, Ch. 3, and by Solinus in Ch. 65; but in the first chapter of his Bk XXXII Pliny states that monsters 600 feet long and 360 feet wide swam up a river in Arabia. 2 3 Some have mouths which open to the extent of twelve to fourteen feet, with teeth six, eight, or even twelve feet long. The two eye-teeth, however, project farther than the rest and at the bottom resemble the shape of a horn, like a boar’s or elephant’s tusk. The mouth of this species of monster is well-adapted to chewing. Its eyes are so large that fifteen men could be seated in each socket, indeed twenty or more, according to the creature’s size. In addition it sprouts horns, six to seven feet long, as hard as real horn, two hundred and fifty of them above each eye. These it can make rigid or slack, and move forwards or backwards, or wave in the air. They cling together to protect its eyes during stormy weather, or when some other unfriendly monster assaults it. 3 It is not surprising that it bears so many horns, even though they are quite a nuisance to it, as the space on the forehead between its eyes measures fifteen to twenty or more feet. 4 I shall tell you in the next chapters of the enormous size and length of the whale’s ribs and other bones, and also to what profitable use the skin, meat, and blubber may be put. 5
