ns 
[3]  CEPHALOPODS OF NORTHEASTERN COAST OF AMERICA. 
and place of occurrence of many of the specimens enumerated below, it 
seems desirable to bring together, in this place, accounts of all these, 
_ in order that the various descriptions and measurements may be more 
readily compared, and also that errors in some of the former accounts 
may be corrected and new information added. ‘To facilitate the compari- 
son of the general accounts of more than twenty-five examples that I am 
now able to enumerate from our coast, I have given, by themselves, the 
statements of the time and place of their occurrence, with such general 
descriptions and measurements of each as are most available, reserving 
the more detailed special descriptions of the preserved specimens for 
the systematic part of this article. 
This seemed the more desirable because the information, concerning 
many of the specimens is so scanty as to render it impossible to refer 
them, with certainty, to either of the species now recognized or named. 
It is probable, however, that only three forms are indicated by the 
large Newfoundland specimens of Architeuthis, and two of these may be 
merely the males and females of one species. One of the principal dif- 
ferences usually indicated by the measurements is in respect to the size 
and length of the shorter arms, one form having them comparatively 
stout, often ‘thicker than a man’s thigh,” while the other form has them 
long and slender (usually 3 to 5 inches in diameter, with a length of 
6 to 11 feet). In case these differences prove to be sexual, those with 
stout arms will probably be the females, judging from analogy with 
the small squids nearest related.* In the three specimens, of which I 
have seen the arms, they are long and slender, but in one the arms are 
much longer in proportion to the body than in the others; there are 
also differences in the denticulation of the suckers of the short arms. 
These differences appear, at present, to indicate two species. 
A few words of explanation may be desirable here, in regard to the rela- 
tive value of the measurements usually given, and also with reference to 
the parts most useful to preserve when, as will usually happen, the whole 
1877. American Naturalist, vol. viii, p. 167, 1874; vol. ix, pp. 21, 78, Jan. and Feb., 
1875 Annals and Magazine of Nat. Hist., March, 1874. Transactions Connecticut 
Acad. Science, vol. v, p. 177, Plates XIII-XXV, 1879-’80. 
*By examinations of very numerous specimens of our common squids, Ommastrephes 
illecebrosus and Loligo Pealei, I have satisfied myself that the adult females of both 
_ commonly differ from the males by having the head, the siphon, the arms, and the 
suckers relatively larger and stronger than in the males. In comparing specimens of 
the two sexes having the body and fins of the same length, this difference is often 
very evident. The large suckers of the tentacular arms often show an increased size 
in the female, in a very marked degree. The short arms show a greater increase in 
diameter than in length. In one of my former articles (Amer. Journ. Sci., ix, p. 179, 
1875) the increase in size of these parts was erroneously, but inadvertently, said to 
be in the male, but this error has been corrected in my subsequent articles. Still, it 
is true that both sexes vary to a considerable extent in the size of the suckers, even in 
adult specimens of equal size, so that a male may easily be selected with suckers 
larger than those of some females of the same size. In these common squidsI have 
_ found no great variation in the relative size and form of the caudal fins, when adult, 
and of the same sex. I have often found the males more common than the females. 
