[205] CEPHALOPODS OF NORTHEASTERN COAST OF AMERICA. 415 



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, though 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 specimens 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 and direct comparison of the adult G. Fabricii with the 

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

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

 Cheloteuthis becomes a synonym of Lestoteuthis. Two of the charac- 

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

 ventral, as well as on the lateral arms, and the supposed absence of the 

 small marginal suckers on the lateral arms, relied upon for character- 

 izing 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, orig- 

 inally considered by me as more reliable and important, was the exist- 

 ence of the peculiar, lateral connective suckers and alternating tuber- 

 cles on the tentacular club. This is now shown by Professor Steenstrup 

 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. arnanitis" is described in 

 some detail, and freely illustrated, there is no indication of any such 

 structure, although the armature of the club is figured (see my Plate 

 XV, fig. 1 6), nor is the difference between the armature of the ventral 

 and lateral arms indicated.* 



1 add a new description of the genus Lestoteuthis, and also of my 

 largest example of L. Fabricii. 



LESTOTEUTHIS Verrill (revised). (See pp. [70], [78].) 



Gonatus Steenstrup, op. cit., pp. 9-2(5 (non Gray). 



Gonatus Verrill, Trans. Conn. Acad., v, pp. 250, 290, 1880 (non Gray). 



Lestoteuthis Verrill, Trans. Conn. Acad., v,p.250, Feb., 1880; p. 390, Oct., 1881. 



Cheloteuthis {Cltiloteuthis by typ. error) Verrill, Trans. Conn. Acad., v, p. 292, Jan., 1881. 



Cheloteuthis Verrill, Bulletin Mus. Comp. Zoo!., viii, p. 109, Marcb, 1881. 



Odontophore with only five rows of teeth. Mandibles very acute, 

 strongly compressed. Lateral connective cartilages of the mantle are 



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

 nearly equal suckers ; according to G. O. Sars tbey all have two central rows of 

 sucker-hooks. My former description was based mainly on the figures and description 

 of G. O. Sars, my only specimen, at that time, being an imperfect young Lestoteuthis, 

 like that of Sars. 



