^0. 4.] VERRILL — GIGANTIC CUTTLE-FISHES. 225 



(2.) A large individual attacked two men, who were in a snicill 

 .sboat, in Conception Bay, and two of the arms which it threw 

 across the boat were cut off with a hatchet, and brought ashore. 

 Full accounts of this adventure, written by Mr. M. Harvey, have 

 been published in many of the newspapers.^ One of the severed 

 arms, or a part of it, was preserved in the museum at St. John, 

 and a photograph of it is now before me. This fragment repre- 

 sents the distal half of one of the long tentacular-arms, with its 

 expanded terminal portion covered with suckers, 24 of which are 

 larger, in two rows, with the border not serrate, but 1-25 inch 

 in diameter ; the others are smaller, very numerous, with the 

 edge supported by a serrated calcareous ring. The part of the 

 arm preserved measured 19 feet in length, and 3-5 inches in 

 circumfereiice, but wider, "like an oar," and (3 inches in circum- 

 ference, nearer the end where the suckers are situated ; but its 

 length, when entire, was estimated at 42 feet.-j- The other arm 

 was destroyed and no description was made, but it was said to 

 liave been 6 feet long and 10 inches in diameter; it was evidently 

 "one of the eight shorter sessile arms. The estimate given for the 

 length of the " body " of this creature (60 feet) was probably 

 intended for the entire length, including the arms. 



(3.) A specimen was found alive in shallow water, at Coomb's 

 Cove, and captured. Concerning this one I have seen only news- 

 paper accounts. It is stated that its body measured ten feet in 

 length and was "nearly as large round as a hogshead" (10 

 to 12 feet) ; its two long arms (of which only one remained) 

 were forty-two feet in length, and " as large as a man's wrist ;'* 

 its short arms were six feet in length, but about nine inches ia 

 diameter, ^' very stout and strong;" the suckers had a serrated 

 edge. The color was reddish. The loss of one long arm and 

 the correspondence of the other in size to the one amputated from 

 from No. 2, justifies a suspicion that this was actually the same 

 individual that attacked the boat. But if not, it was probably 

 one of the same species, and of about the same size. 



(4.) A pair of jaws and two of the suckers were recently for- 

 warded to me from the Smithsonian Institution. These were 

 received from Ilev, A. 3Iunn, who writes that they were taken 



♦Also in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History, January, 1874, with a 

 wood-cut of the arm. 



t Doubtless these long arms are very contractile and changeable in length like 

 those of the ordinary squids. 



Vol. VII. p No. 4. 



