228 REPOKT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [18] 



ago. Our correspondent says : ' Mr. Thomas Moores and several others 

 saw something- moving about in tl*e water, not far from the stage. Get- 

 ting into a punt they went alongside, when they were surprised to see a 

 monstrous squid. One of the men struck at it with an oar, and it im- 

 mediately struck for the shore, and went quite* upon the beach. The 

 men then succeeded in getting a rope around it, and hauled it quite 

 ashore. It measured 38 feet altogether. The body was about 9 feet in 

 length, and two of its tentacles or horns were 29 feet each. There were 

 several other smaller horns, but they were not so long. The body was 

 about 6 feet in circumference. When I saw it, it was in the water, and 

 was very much disfigured, as one of the men had thoughtlessly cut off 

 the two longest tentacles, and had ripped the body partly open, thereby 

 completely spoiling the appearance of the creature. The foregoing par- 

 ticulars I obtained from Mr. Moores.' " 



No. 24.— The Grand Banks specimen, 1880. 



Plate V, figures 5-7. Plate VI. 



This specimen, which I have designated as No. 24, was found, dead 

 and mutilated, floating at the surface, at the Grand Banks of Newfound- 

 land, April, 1880, by Capt. O. A. Whitten and crew of the schooner "Wui, 

 H. Oakes," and by them it was well preserved and presented to the 

 United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries. It is of great inter- 

 est, because it furnishes the means of completing the description of parts 

 that were lacking or badly preserved in the larger specimens, especially 

 the sessile arms and the buccal membranes. 



The specimen consists of a part of the head, with all the arms attached, 

 and with the suckers in a good state of preservation on all the arms, 

 though the tips of all the short arms, except the left of the second pair, 

 are destroyed, and all of the arms are more or less injured on their outer 

 surfaces. The jaws and buccal membranes, with the odontophore and 

 oesophagus, are intact. Parts of the cartilaginous skull, with some of 

 the ganglia and the collapsed eyes, are present, but the external surface 

 of the head is gone and the eyelids are badly mutilated. No part of the 

 body was preserved. The tentacular arms, with all the suckers, are in 

 good preservation. Unfortunately, the distal portions of both the ven- 

 tral arms had been destroyed, so that the sex could not be determined. 

 The color of the head, so far as preserved, and of the external surfaces 

 of the sessile arms, is much like that of the common squids. 



Reproduction 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 ex- 

 tremities of the ventral arms and of the third right arm appear to have 

 been destroyed, besides other injuries. But both the dorsal arms and 



