[ 205 ] CEPHALOPODS OF NORTHEASTERN COAST OF AMERICA. 
essential and peculiar features of the armature, both of the sessile and 
of the tentacular arms, including the special, lateral connective suckers 
and tubercles of the club, are present, though minute, even in the very 
young individuals, such as described by G. O. Sars. The fact that these 
characters have been overlooked is undoubtedly due, in many cases, to 
the imperfectly preserved specimens that have been examined. This 
was, at least, the case with the only American specimens seen by me 
until this year. They had all been taken from fish stomachs, and had 
lost more or less of their suckers and hooks. 
A careful and direct comparison of the adult G. Fabricii with the 
mutilated specimen which was last year described- by me as Cheloteu¬ 
this rapax , has convinced me that they are identical, and, therefore, 
Cheloteuthis becomes a synonym of Lestoteuthis. Two of the charac¬ 
ters, viz: the supposed presence of two central rotes of hooks on the 
ventral, as well as on the lateral arms, and the supposed absence of the 
small marginal suckers on the lateral arms, relied upon for character¬ 
izing Cheloteuthis , were doubtless due to post-mortem changes. The 
ventral arms had lost the horny rings of the suckers, and the soft parts 
had taken a form exceedingly like that of the sheaths of the hooks of 
the lateral arms. But by the careful use of reagents, I have been able 
to restore the original form of some of the distal ones sufficiently to 
show that they actually were sucker-sheaths. The third character, orig¬ 
inally considered by me as more reliable and important, was the exist¬ 
ence of the peculiar, lateral connective suckers and alternating tuber¬ 
cles on the tentacular club. This is now shown by Professor Steenstrup 
to be a character of his Gonatus. But no one had previously described 
such a structure in connection with that genfis. Even in the recent and 
excellent work of G. O. Sars, in which 11 G. amcenus v is described in 
some detail, and freely illustrated, there is no indication of any such 
structure, although the armature of the club is figured (see my Plate 
XV, fig. 1 b), nor is the difference between the armature of the ventral 
and lateral arms indicated.* 
I add a new description of the genus Lestoteuthis , and also of my 
largest example of L. Fahricii. 
LESTOTEUTHIS Verrill (revised). (See pp. [70], [78].) 
Gonatus Steenstrup, op. cit.,pp. 9-2G {non Gray). 
Gonatus Verrill, Trans. Conn. Acad., v, pp. 250,290,1880 ( non Gray). 
Lestoteuthis Verrill, Trans. Conn. Acad., v, p.250, Feb., 1880; p. 390, Oct., 1881. 
Cheloteuthis (Chiloteuthis by typ. error) Verrill, Trans. Conn. Acad., v, p.292, Jan., 1881. 
Cheloteuthis Verrill, Bulletin Mus. Comp. Zool., viii, p. 109, March, 1881. 
Odontophore with only five rows of teeth. Mandibles very acute, 
strongly compressed. Lateral connective cartilages of the mantle are 
* According to Gray, in Gonatus all the sessile arms bear four rows of similar and 
nearly equal suckers; according to G. O. Sars they all have two central rows of 
sucker-hooks. My former description was based mainly on the figures and description, 
of G. O. Sars, my only specimen, at that time, being an imperfect young Lestoteuthis, 
like that of Sars. 
