THE KRAKEN. 375 



I inch. So much for De Montfort's " suckers as big as 

 saucepan-lids." From a well-defined fold of skin which 

 spreads out from each margin of that surface of the arm 

 over which the suckers are situated, Professor Owen has 

 given to this calamary the generic name of Plectoteuthis^ 

 with the specific title of grandis to indicate its enormous 

 size. No history relating to this interesting specimen has 

 been preserved. No one knows its origin, nor when it was 

 received, but Dr. Gray told me that he believed it came 

 from the east coast of South America. It has, however, 

 long formed part of the stores of the British Museum, and, 

 although previously open to public view, was more recently 

 for many years kept in the basement chambers of the old 

 building in Bloomsbury, which were irreverently called by 

 the initiated "the spirit vaults and bottle department," 

 because fishes, mollusca, &c., preserved in spirits were there 

 deposited. I hope the public will have greater facility of 

 access to it in the new Museum of Natural History. 



Here, then, in our midst, and to be seen by all who ask 

 permission to inspect it, is, and has long been, a limb of a 

 great cephalopod capable of upsetting a boat, or of hauling 

 a man out of her, or of clutching one engaged in scraping 

 a ship's side, and dragging him under water, as described 

 by the old master-mariner Magnus Dens. The tough 

 supple tentacles, shot forth with lightning rapidity, would 

 be long enough to reach him at a distance of a dozen yards, 

 and strong enough to drag him within the grasp of the 

 eight shorter arms, a helpless victim to the mandibles of a 

 beak sufficiently powerful to tear him in pieces and crush 

 some of his smaller bones. For, once within that dreadful 

 embrace, his escape, unaided, would be impossible. The 

 clinging power of this Plectoteuthis is so enormously aug- 

 mented by the additional surface given by the expanded 



