374 SEA MONSTERS UNMASKED. 



1 curragh ' (a boat made like the ' coracle,' with wooden ribs covered 

 with tarred canvas) observed to seaward a large floating mass, sur- 

 rounded by gulls. They pulled out to it, believing it to be wreck, but 

 to their astonishment found it was an enormous cuttle-fish, lying per- 

 fectly still, as if basking on the surface of the water. Paddling up 

 with caution, 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 in their frail canvas craft, came 

 up with it, five miles out in the open Atlantic, and severed another of 

 its arms and the head. These portions are now in the Dublin Museum. 

 The shorter arms measure, each, eight feet in length, and fifteen inches 

 round the base : the tentacular arms are said to have been thirty feet 

 long. The body sank." 



Finally, there is in our own national collection, preserved 

 in spirit in a tall glass jar, a single arm of a huge cephalopod, 

 which, by the kindness and courtesy of the officers of the 

 department, I was permitted to examine and measure when 

 I first described it, in May, 1873. It is 9 feet long, and 12 

 inches in circumference at the base, tapering gradually to a 

 fine point. It has about 300 suckers, pedunculated, or set 

 on tubular footstalks, placed alternately in two rows, and 

 having serrated, horny rings, but no hooks ; the diameter 

 of the largest of these rings is half an inch ; the smallest is 

 not larger than a pin's head. This is one of the eight 

 shorter, or pedal, and not one of the long, or tentacular, 

 arms of the calamary to which it belonged. The relative 

 length of the arms to that of the body and tentacles 

 varies in different genera of the Teuthidce, and it is not 

 impossible that this may be the case even in individuals 

 of the same species. But, judging from the proportions of 

 known examples, I estimate the length of the tentacles 

 at 36 feet, and that of the body at from 10 to n feet: 

 total length 47 feet. The beak would probably have been 

 about 5 inches long from hinge socket to point, and the 

 diameter of the largest suckers of the tentacles about 



