260 A. E. Verrill — North American Cephalopods. 



ish white ground-color between them. TJie outer buccal membrane is 

 darker ; the inner surfaces of the arms are whitisli ; the peduncular 

 portions of the tentacular arms have fewer color-specks, and are paler 

 than the other arms. 



Reprodxiction of lost parts. 

 This creature had been badly mutilated long before its death, as 

 its healed wounds show, and to this fact many of the imperfections 

 of the specimen are due. At the time of its death, or subsequently, 

 the extremities of the ventral arms and of the third right arm appear 

 to have been destroyed, besides other injuries. But both the dorsal 

 arms and both the lateral arms of the left side had previously been 

 truncated at 12 to 13 inches from their bases. The ends had not 

 only healed up entirely, but each one had apparently commenced to 

 reproduce the lost portion. The reproduced part consists, in each 

 case, of an elongated, acute, soft papilla, arising from the otherwise 

 obtuse end of the arm. At its base one or two small suckers have 

 already been reproduced, and minute rudiments of others can be 

 detected on some of them. Whether these arms would have been 

 perfectly restored in course of time is, perhaps, doubtful,* but there 

 can be no doubt that a partial restoration would, at least, have been 

 effected. On the basal half of several of the arms some of the 

 suckers had also been previously lost, and these were all in the pro- 

 cess of restoration. The restored suckers were mostly less than one 

 half the diameter of those adjacent, and in some cases less than one- 

 third. Among the restored suckers were some malformations. One 

 has a double aperture, with a double horny rim. In one case two 

 small suckers, with pedicels in close contact, occupy the place of a 

 single sucker. In another instance a small pedicelled sucker arises 

 from the pedicel of a larger one, near its base. 



Tlie arms and suckers. 

 With the exception of the left arm of the second pair, none of the 

 sessile arras have their tips perfect. Therefore it is not possible to 

 give their relative lengths. The dorsal arms are the smallest at base 

 and the third pair largest. They are all provided with a rather nar- 

 row marginal membrane along each border of the front side. These 

 membranes are scarcely wide enough to i-each to the level of the rims 

 of the suckers, though they may have done so in life. The front 

 margin, bearing the suckers is narrow on all the arms, but relatively 



* That mutilations of the arms in species of Octopus are regularly restored is well- 

 known, but it has been doubted whether this occurs in the ten-armed forms. 



