1889] Another Rare Visitor. 359 



favourite line of thought. Among the birds spoken of as 

 41 peculiarly Irish," it may be observed that he includes 

 the Great Snipe so extremely rare a visitor that only a 

 month previously he had congratulated Dr. Scharff on 

 having "at last obtained a real Great Snipe" for the 

 Museum ; also the Snow Goose, which, so far as was known, 

 had straggled to Ireland (in small companies or singly) 

 on three occasions only. What, it might be asked, was 

 there " peculiarly Irish " about such birds as these ? But 

 in the one case (just as with the Nightingale and Reed 

 Warbler) the very scarcity of the Great Snipe was a true 

 and remarkable characteristic of Irish ornithology ; while 

 in the other, so many as three visits of a Goose from the 

 Canadian North- West probably seemed to him as in- 

 teresting from their frequency as did those of the " Solitary 

 Snipe" from their fewness. 



Another rare visitor to the Irish coast turned up this 

 year at Achill. A great Squid* was stranded on the shore 

 at Dugort. It was the fourth instance of the kind in the 

 British Islands, and three of the four occurrences had 

 been on the West coast of Ireland. Naturally, he was 

 much interested on the receipt of the first intelligence from 

 his correspondent at Dugort, Mr. Sheridan : 



October itfh, 1889. 



DEAR SIR, Judging from your drawing of the two long tentacles 

 (24 feet each), and from the piece which you sent, I think it must be a 

 gigantic Squid which has been cast ashore. If not now too late, can 

 you try and see whether you can count the number of the short arms ? 

 Is there any trace of the brown horny mandibles, which should be 

 about six inches across, and placed at the head, in the centre of the 

 arms : in fact, a great brown beak, something like a parrot's ? The 

 central bone or "pen" of the Cuttle-fishes runs inside in a line down 

 the body. It is of cartilage, and might be seen now if the other parts 

 have decayed or been knocked about by the sea : a long, narrow carti- 

 lage, of which it would be very interesting to recover even a piece. I am 

 very sorry that you could not find any sucker -rings. I daresay they 

 have fallen out through decay. Still it is worth while to look again, as 

 there must have been a great number. Again, the eyes must have been 

 as big as a plate. What a pity it was not stranded in a fresher con- 



* An acconnt of this Squid appeared in the " Zoologist " for January, 1890. 



