THE CEPHALOPODS: ZH 
‘ 
the Museum at Trieste. Twenty years ago, a calmar was caught 
off the south coast of France, six feet long; it is still to be 
seen in the collection of the Faculty of Sciences at Montpellier. 
Péron, the naturalist, met in the Australian seas a huge cuttle- 
fish, rolling heavily on the surface of the waves—its arms, more 
than eight feet long, twisting about like hideous snakes. Rang, 
in the same part of the world, met a cephalopod with a reddish 
body, which was the size of a tun cask. Swediaur reports that 
some whalers took out of the mouth of a whale pieces of a 
cuttle-fish which were twenty-five feet long! In the museum of 
the College of Surgeons, there is one of the mandibles of a cuttle 
larger than a hand. These are scientific accounts, and can be 
credited ; from them we gather that the cephalopods reach a size 
far exceeding that attained by any other invertebrate animals. 
One of the most authentic accounts of the capture of a gigantic 
cephalopod is communicated by M. Sabin Berthelot, the French 
Consul at the Canary Islands. On the 30th of November, 1861, 
the steam corvette, Alecton, commanded by Lieutenant Bouyer, 
was cruising between Teneriffe and Madeira, when she encountered 
a monster cephalopod, floating on the surface of the water. It 
was sixteen or eighteen feet long, without taking into account its 
eight long arms, which were covered with suckers. Its eyes, which 
were on the surface of its head, were of an enormous size; their 
glimmering greenness and their fixed stare, rendered their gaze most 
unpleasant. The mouth, which protruded like the beak of a parrot, 
opened ten inches. The body, which was fusiform, and terminated 
in two fleshy lobes or fins of a large size, weighed upwards of 
4,000 pounds. This brick-red mass was sighted by the look-out 
about two o'clock in the afternoon. As the corvette approached, 
the creature showed signs of intelligence, endeavouring to move 
out of the way of the steamer. Unfortunately, at the time a 
heavy swell was running: still the mollusk always remained on 
the surface. The commander determined to secure the creature 
for the sake of science. They loaded the guns, made the harpoons 
ready, with rope nooses. At the first shot, the monster plunged 
beneath the water, and appeared again at the other side of the 
boat. Again the guns were discharged, and, each time the creature 
