[3] CEPHALOPODS OF NORTHEASTERN COAST OF AMERICA. 213 



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 

 G 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 



1S77. 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 examination's of very numerous specimens of our common squids, Ommastrephes 

 illeceirosus and Loligo Pealei, I have satisfied myself that the adult females of both 

 commonly differ from the males by having the head, the siphou, the arms, aud the 

 suckers relatively larger and stronger than iti the males. In comparing specimens of 

 the two sexes having the body and tins 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, 

 l-7.">) 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 subsecpient 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 squids I have 

 found no great variation in the relative size aud form of the caudal fins, when adult, 

 and of the same sex. I have often found the males more common than the females. 



