Gatty Marine Laboratory ^ St. Andreivs. 173 



it was of unusual size, no similar form having been met with 

 for forty year?, when a somewhat smaller example (mantle 

 20 inches and tentacles 3 feet) was procured on the beach. 

 The visits of the swarms of smaller sqnids which prove so 

 troublesome to tiie liners are as uncertain, one having been 

 noted in 1885 and the last in 1891 *. On the last-mentiotied 

 occasion avast number took possession of the ground between 

 the Bell Rock and St. Andrews, entered the latter, and even 

 filled the salmon stake-nets, though most escaped through 

 the meshes when the nets were hauled. Very large squids in 

 British waters appear to be rare, one slightly larger than the 

 present example having been described by Dr, Goodrich f, 

 and two are mentioned by him as in the British Museum. 

 Foreign specimens of great size are well known, especially on 

 the American coasts J. A gigantic one was seen in 1876, 

 when a Scotch herring-boat, containing amongst others the 

 attendant at the Laboratory (A. W. Brown), leaving Howtli 

 Point, was summoned by the cries of the occupants of a 

 diver's boat. They found the diver, who had been surveying 

 a sunken tug off St. John's Point, on the ladder, to which 

 he had been hauled (as no signal had been made for some 

 time), with his arms pinioned by a huge cuttletish. The men 

 rapidly cut the diver free and allowed the cuttlefish to 

 escape. Their impression was that the body of the cuttlefish 

 was about a foot in diameter and the arms about 7 or 8 teet 

 in length §. 



In tiie present mangled example now in the University 

 Museum the length of tiie mantle from the tip of the tail to 

 the collar is 25 iriches. The caudal tin is 11 inches from the 

 apex to the centre, 11^ inches along the outer slopes, and 

 fully 10 inches across the base on each side, though the latter 

 is probably underestimated, as the central portion had been 

 lacerated by the gulls. The total breadth of the base of the 

 caudal is thus more than 20 inches. The tentacles are 

 absent, but the eight arms have an average length of V6\ inches, 

 and the breadth of the winged or keeled arm is fully 2| inches. 

 The pen, characterized by its great strength and stillness, is 

 in fragments, but when laid careiuUy together it measures 

 23 inches, though in all probability in its complete condition 



* Fourth Ann. Rep. Scotcli Fishery Board (1885), p. 204, and Tenth 

 Report (1891), part iii. p. 299. 



t .Tourn. Mar. J3iol. Assoc, vol. ii. n. s. p. 314 (189.'i). 



X An interesting account of one of these is given by Prof. D'Arcy 

 Thompson, Proc. Zool. Soc, Dec. 18, 1900, p. 992. 



§ I^art of an arm was seciu'ed for Glasgow Museum, but Prof. Graham 

 Keir, who kindly made a search lately, could find no trace of it. 



