156 Transactions. — Zoology. 



■without difficulty. This a Decapod is unable to do ; both the 

 perfect specimens of the latter obtained by me at this place 

 were, when first observed, alive and uninjured, and, though 

 close to the sea, the one on a shingle beach and the other on 

 smooth papa rock, neither was able to return to its native 

 element. Mr. T. W. Kirk, in a paper read before this Society, 

 October 10th, 1879, mentions an Octopus stranded at Kaima- 

 rama, in Hawke's Bay, but I am greatly disposed to believe it 

 to have been a Decapod which had lost its tentacular arms. 



About ten years ago I obtained a fine Decapod on shore in 

 Clifford Bay, Cape Campbell, having a body 7 feet long, and a 

 total length of 20 feet, a large and powerful creature, but not 

 nearly so formidable a monster as that which I now desire to 

 bring under your notice. As it lay upon the rocks it presented 

 from a distance the appearance of a mass of raw beef, or of 

 having been covered with dried blood. On a closer inspec- 

 tion this was found to be owing to a great number of 

 minute specks of a bright red-brown colour with which the 

 epidermis was covered. Under this the flesh was firm and 

 white, presenting the appearance of hlanc mange made from 

 corn-flour. The body was slender, cylindrical, the sides nearly 

 straight, having a small caudal fin, or fins, for they did not 

 extend quite to the end of the tail or unite across the body, 

 and were mere lateral expansions of the mantle. The outer 

 edges of these fins, if produced so as to meet, would have 

 formed a perfect oval. The head w\as short and thick, with 

 large eyes furnished with a lid, the mouth being armed with a 

 large and powerful beak. The eight sessile arms were of equal 

 length, 6 feet 6 inches, but not of equal thickness, though all 

 were thick and strong ; two, those next the tentacular arms, 

 were much stouter than the other six, being as large at the 

 base as an average man's leg eight inches above the knee. All 

 the sessile arms were furnished with stalked suckers, having 

 a row of incurved teeth, and varying in size from those at the 

 base, with a diameter of 1^ inches to that of a small pea at the 

 point. The tentacular arms were long and slender, almost 

 exactly similar to those of Arcliitcuthis vcrrilli, as figured by 

 Mr. T. W. Kirk.='= They had also the same arrangement of 

 small tubercles and suckers, at intervals of 2 feet from tlie| 

 club to the base. The club, as will best be seen from inspec- 

 tion of the specimen forwarded, difi'ercd from that of A. vcrrilli 

 chiefly in having small suckers on very long stalks placed along 

 the margins between the large ones. The internal shell was 

 lanceolate, rather broad, transparent, and brittle when first 

 taken from the body. It was in several pieces, owing probably 

 to its having been broken during the animal's struggles to regain 

 the water. 



* " Tranp. N.Z. Inst.," vol. xiv., p. 36. 



