A. E. Verrill — North American Cephalopods, 293 



Chiloteuthis rapax, ap. nov. 



Plate XLIX, figures 1-1/. 



A specimen of this remarkable squid, in very bad condition, was 

 taken from the stomach of a tish, trawled at station 893, in 372 

 fathoms, about 100 miles south of Newport, R. I. It was accompanied 

 by a specimen of Ommastrephes illecebrosa, in a similar condition. It 

 had lost its pen, its epidermis, and most of the horny hooks and 

 sucker-rings ; the head was detached from the body and the caudal 

 fin was nearly destroyed ; the eye-lids were gone, but the eye-balls 

 remained. The description must, therefore, remain imperfect till 

 other specimens can be obtained. 



The body was rather short and thick, tapering rapidly backward. 

 The caudal tin appears to have been short-rhomboidal, but this is un- 

 certain. The siphon is large, with an internal valve. The connective 

 cartilages (fig. \e) on the sides of the base of the siphon are long-ovate, 

 with the posterior end widest and rounded. The corresponding car- 

 tilages on the inside of the mantle are simple longitudinal ridges. 

 Head large, with very large eyes ; pupils round. The arms are long 

 and taper to slender tips ; the dorsal ones are smaller and shorter than 

 the others ; the lateral and ventral pairs are nearly equal in length, 

 and about as long as the mantle ; the ventral arms are somewhat more 

 slender than the lateral ones. All the arms appear to have borne 

 slender-pedicelled claws or hooks with strongly incurved, horny points, 

 but only the fleshy parts of these are left, in most cases, and the tips 

 of the arms are bare. On the ventral arms these hooks were smaller, 

 and in four rows ; the fleshy portion of these consists of a small 

 rounded head, with lateral lobes, running up, on one side, into an in- 

 curved beak, so that the shape is somewhat like a bird's head. On 

 the other arms the claws were in two rows only, but they were much 

 larger ; in a few cases, on the lateral arms, the horny claws are left. 

 These are strongly compressed and deeply imbedded in the muscular 

 sheath, only the sharp, incurved point projecting (figs. Ic, It?). 



The tentacular-arms (fig. 1) are long and strong, their length being 

 more than twice that of the sessile arms. The club is rather stout, long, 

 decidedly expanded, and has an elevated, crest-like keel on the distal 

 half of its dorsal surface ; this keel rises abruptly at its origin, and is 

 colored on the outer side, but white on the face next to the inner 

 surface of the club. The club is broadest near its base, the distal 

 third is narrow and the tip rounded. The armature is remarkable : in 

 the middle line there is a row of six medium sized hooks (fig. 1, a"), 

 followed by two much larger ones (fig. l,a' a), situated near the mid- 



