Manchester Memoirs^ Vol. xlv. (1901), No. 4. : 



IV. Note on d'Orbigny's figure of Onychoteuthis dtissumieri. 

 By Wm. E. Hoyle. 



Received and read fanuary Sth, jgoi. 



In the year 1895 Professor Joubin (05, p- 1172) 

 described a remarkable cephalopod taken from the 

 stomach of a sperm-whale, taken in the neighbourhood of 

 the Azores by His Serene Highness the Prince of Monaco, 

 the most striking characteristic of which was that it 

 appeared to be covered with scales of a subquadrangular 

 form and arranged with great regularity. Such an 

 arrangement was, of course, quite novel in the order, 

 and excited no little interest, but as the specimen was 

 unique and only consisted of the partially digested trunk, 

 without head, arms or suckers, no opinion as to its system- 

 atic position could be offered. A few years later Dr. Einar 

 Lonnberg (98, p. 55) noticed a similar appearance in a 

 specimen of Onychoteuthis ingens obtained by the Swedish 

 Expedition to Magellans Straits. This he found to be 

 due not to the presence of scales, but to the raising of the 

 skin by numerous subcutaneous papillae in consequence 

 of the maceration it had undergone. 



During a visit to Hamburg last summer, my friend. 

 Dr. Pfeffer, of the Natural History Museum in that city, 

 showed me a squid, which had similarly been obtained 

 from the stomach of a cetacean, and was covered over the 

 greater part of the mantle with small shining convex 

 bodies, about half a millimetre across, and presenting an 

 appearance like fine-grained shagreen. 



March nth, igoi. 



