3304 THE MOLLUSKS OR SHELLFISH 



great exaggerations, they are to some extent founded on fact. We are, perhaps, 

 too skeptical to believe in an octopus rising from the sea, and carrying off a three- 

 masted ship. Yet some of the squids are of such enormous size, that we can 

 imagine they constituted the source from which these old tales were derived. In 

 November, 1874, a specimen was brought ashore at St. John's, Newfoundland, by 

 some fishermen, who captured it in their herring nets. It was more or less muti- 

 lated in the capture, but the following measurements were taken from the parts 

 preserved: Body seven feet long, tail fin twenty-two inches broad, tentacular arms 

 twenty-four feet in length, short or sessile arms six feet long, some of them being 

 ten inches round at the base. Particulars of several other specimens of gigantic 

 squids, varying in total length from thirty to fifty-two feet, and also taken near 

 Newfoundland, have been recorded; the estimated weight of one of these being one 

 thousand pounds. 



On the twenty-fourth of April, 1875, a large calamary was met with off Boffin 

 island, on the Irish coast. The crew of a " currah " observed to seaward a large 

 floating mass. They pulled out to it, believing it to be a wreck, but found it was an 

 enormous cuttlefish, lying perfectly still, as if basking on the surface of the water. 

 Paddling up, they lopped off one of its arms. The animal immediately set out to 

 sea, rushing through the water at a tremendous pace. The men gave chase, and, 

 after a hard pull, came up with it, five miles out in the Atlantic, and severed 

 another of its arms and the head. The shorter arms measured each eight feet in 

 length and fifteen inches round the base; the tentacular arms are said to have 

 been thirty feet long. A single arm of a large squid, supposed to have been found 

 off the coast of South America, was nine feet long and eleven inches round the base, 

 and had two rows of suckers, with toothed, horny rings, each row consisting of one 

 hundred and fifty suckers. The largest of these rings was half an inch in diameter, 

 whereas the smallest, near the tapering end of the arm, was only about the size of a 

 pin's head. Judging by other specimens, it is probable that this creature must 

 have had a body ten or twelve feet in length, with tentacles over thirty feet long. 



Some portions of a remarkable gigantic cephalopod were obtained by the Prince 

 of Monaco off the Azores, which were vomited by a harpooned sperm whale in its 

 death struggle. The body of this huge squid was covered with scales arranged 

 spirally like those of a pine cone; and from this characteristic unique among the 

 Cephalopods it has been placed in a separate genus Lepidoteuthis. 



Family SEPIOLID^^ 



Sepiola is represented by a small decapod not unfrequently found on the British, 

 coasts. Mr. Lee observes that " it has the faculty of rapidly changing color, and, 

 if angered or alarmed, its hue is almost instantaneously altered, from a pale parch- 

 ment dotted with pink to a deep reddish brown. In its habits this little animal 

 differs as much from the Sepia as the latter from the octopus. It naturally buries 

 itself up to its eyes in the sand; but as sand is apt to harbor impurities, which in a 

 bowl or tank become corrupt, and generate poisonous sulphureted hydrogen, the 

 bottom of these receptacles is usually covered with a shingle. It is most interesting 



