PROF. OWEN ON NEW AND RARE CEPHALOPODA. 165 
longueur” (p. 1265), are affected by the same conditions of guess and emotions as are 
those of the 60 feet ascribed by the Newfoundland fishermen to their assailant. ‘‘ Les 
yeux, a fleur de téte, avaient un développement prodigieux et une effrayante fixité. Sa 
bouche, ou bec de perroquet, pouvait offrir prés d’un demi-métre” (idid.) The character 
of the eyes squares with a species of Ommastrephes; a beak of about 2 feet diameter 
recalls the dimensions assigned to the same part of this Squid by the Newfoundland 
fishermen. 
The statement by the estimable naturalist Péron1:—“non loin de Vile de Van 
Diemen, nous apercumes dans les flots, 4 peu de distance du navire, une énorme espéce 
de Sépie, vraisemblablement du genre Calmar, de la grosseur d’un tonneau,” adds to 
our knowledge of the geographical distribution of large Cephalopods, but not to that 
of their exact dimensions. 
Steenstrup’s notice? of a large Cephalopod is of more worth, though made on 
fragments only of a specimen which the fishermen of the coast of Jutland had cut to 
pieces for bait. The mouth (or part corresponding to the subject of Plate XXX. 
fig. 2 and Plate XXXI. fig. 1 of the present paper) is somewhat vaguely stated to be 
“of the size of an infant’s head.” It is referred to a decapodal genus, Architeuthis, as 
Architeuthis dux. Another large species, seen or taken on the coast of Greenland, is 
noted by the same estimable naturalist as an Architeuthis monachus; but the generic 
distinction from Ommastrephes, d’Orb., is not given. 
The Mediterranean Calamary obtained by Eschricht at Marseilles, and now, or part of 
it, preserved in the Museum of Copenhagen, is stated to be 1 métre 850 millims. (French) 
=6 feet 1 inch (English) in total length, tentacles and trunk included—i. e., I conclude, 
in the position in which Enoploteuthis cookii is restored in Plate XXXIII. fig. 1. Here 
we have an allied Decapod of about the same length, “vela” being developed from 
some of the cephalic arms. Prof. Steenstrup has assigned to Eschricht’s large Medi- 
terranean Squid the name Ommastrephes pteropus. 
The largest Cephalopod described in the great work of Férussac and d’Orbigny is the 
Ommastrephes giganteus*. To this species M. d@Orbigny assigns :—* Longueur totale 
1 métre 110 millim.” (3 feet 8 inches), “longueur du corps 440 millim.” (1 foot 
41 inches). It is not stated whether the admeasurement of total length included the 
outstretched tentacles with the head and body. But in any case the size counted as 
gigantic falls far short of that evinced by the brachial arm of Plectoteuthis grandis and 
the admeasured parts of the great Squids captured in Fortune Bay and Trinity Bay, 
Newfoundland. 
The character of unusual size is not limited to the Decapod division of Cephalopoda; 
but the evidence of alleged monstrous Poulpes (Octopoda) is less exact. 
1 «Voyage aux Terres Australes,’ tome i. p. 18. 
? Oplysninger, &c., ‘ Forhandl. Skandinay. Naturforsk. Christiania,’ 1857, pp. 182-185. 
3 Op. cit. p. 350, Calmars, pl. xx. 
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