252 Alexander Goodman More. [ib75 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 



INISH-BOFIN. 



THE capture of a gigantic marine monster off one of the 

 islands of Connemara, in April, 1875, recalled his attention 

 to a spot he had often wished to visit. In his early corre- 

 spondence (in 1855) with Mr. Henry Evans, a subject only 

 second in interest to the seals of Roundstone was the 

 great " sunfish," as big as a boat, of which Mr. Evans 

 told him the Galway people spoke, and which was evi- 

 dently different from the ordinary sunfish (Orthagoriscus 

 mola), though as to what it was, neither of the correspon- 

 dents could arrive at any opinion. He had since learned 

 that this so-called sunfish was the great Basking Shark ; 

 and the isle of Inish-bofin had since the date of his first 

 visit to Roundstone been peculiarly associated (through 

 the stories then told him) with the hunting of this giant 

 fish. 



However, it was no basking shark, but a huge cuttle- 

 fish, with tentacles thirty feet long, that met its death at 

 the hands of some Bofin fishermen on Monday, April 26th, 

 1875. An account of the capture, which appeared in a 

 Galway newspaper, and was afterwards reproduced in the 

 " Zoologist/' reads more like a passage from one of the 

 voyages of Sindbad than a bit of Natural History from the 

 Irish coast. 



On Monday last the crew of a curragh, consisting of three men, met 

 with a strange adventure north-west of Boffin Island, Connemara. . . . 

 Having shot their spillets (or long lines) in the morning, the crew of 

 the curragh observed to seaward a great floating mass surrounded by 

 gulls ; they pulled out, believing it to be a wreck, but, to their great 

 astonishment, found it to be a cuttlefish, of enormous proportions, and 

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

 The cuttle is much prized as a bait for coarse fish, and, their wonder 



