of British Mollusca, Aid 



if basking on the surface of the water. Paddling- up with 

 caution, they lopped off one of its arms. The animal imme- 

 diately set out to sea, rushing through the water at a tremen- 

 dous pace. The men gave chase, and after a hard pull in their 

 frail canvas craft came up with it 5 miles out in the open 

 Atlantic and severed another of its arms and head. These 

 portions are now in the Dublin Museum. The shorter arms 

 measure each 8 feet in length and 15 inches round the base ; 

 the tentacular arms are said to have been 30 feet long. The 

 body sank." [Sergeant Thomas Conner, of the Royal Irish 

 Constabulary, in the ' Zoologist,' June 1875.) 



This specimen was described as follows by Mr. A. G. More 

 under the name of Architeuthis dux, Steenstrup, in the 

 1 Annals ' : — 



" Tentacles 30 feet long when fresh (14 and 17 feet can 

 still be made up from the pickled pieces). A few distant, 

 small, and nearly sessile suckers occur at long intervals along 

 the inner surface of the peduncle. The club, measuring 2 

 feet 9 inches in its present shrunken state, is occupied in the 

 centre of the palm by two rows of large stalked suckers 

 nearly 1 inch in diameter, fourteen in each row ; an alternating 

 row of fourteen smaller suckers (half an inch in diameter) 

 occupies the margin on each side of the palm ; thus there are 

 twenty-eight large one-inch suckers in the middle, and the 

 same number of half-inch suckers along the outer edge. These 

 outer suckers are each armed with a denticulated bony ring of 

 some twenty-eight teeth pointing inwards ; and no doubt the 

 large inner suckers were similarly furnished, but their rings 

 had fallen out or had been removed before the specimens were 

 examined. Just beneath where the large suckers end there 

 occurs a cluster of small suckers, two tenths of an inch in 

 diameter ; and these are arranged closely in six transverse 

 rows for about 5 inches along the now narrowing wrist of 

 the club ; only a few of the uppermost of these are furnished 

 with denticulate rings; the greater number, like the few 

 small suckers of the peduncle, are sustained by rings with an 

 entire or smooth edge. Above the large suckers of the palm 

 the club tapers upwards, and is again clothed with a great 

 number of small and apparently smooth-ringed suckers. 



" The short arm is quite spoiled for examination : all the 

 horny rings are gone ; and the suckers themselves are scarcely 

 represented. This arm measured 8 feet in length, and 15 

 inches round the base, when fresh. 



" The beak has a strong wide tooth above the middle of the 

 edge of the inner mandible, and a much narrower notch on 



