A. E. Verrill — North American Cephalopoda. 389 



Atlantic, as simply the young and adult of tliu same species, but also 

 that all the 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, thougli 

 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 speci- 

 mens 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 direct comparison of the adult G. Fabricii, with the 

 mutilated specimen which was last year described by me as Gheloteit- 

 this rapax^ has convinced me that they are identical, and, therefore, 

 Cheloteuthis becomes a synonym of Lestotevthis. Two of the char- 

 acters, viz : the supposed presence of two central roics of hooks on 

 the ventral, as well as on the lateral arms, and the supposed ab- 

 sence of the small marginal suckers on the lateral arms, relied upon 

 for characterizing 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, originally considered by me as more reliable and 

 important, was the existence of the peculiar, lateral connective suck- 

 ers and alternating tubercles on the tentacular club. This is now 

 shown by Professor Steeustrup to be a character of his Gonatus. But 

 no one had previously described such a structure in connection with 

 that genus. Even in the recent and excellent work of G. O. Sars, in 

 which " G. amoenus''' is described in some detail, and freely illustrated, 

 there is no indication of any such striictiire, although the armature 

 of the club is figured (see my PI. 45, fig. 1/;), 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. Fabricii. 



*According to Gray, in Gonatus all the sessile arms bear four rows of similar and 

 nearly equal suckers ; according to G. 0. Sars they all have two central rows of 

 sucker-hooks. My description (p. 290) was based mainly on the figures and description 

 of G. 0. Sars, my only specimen, at that time, being an imperfect young one. 



