232 THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGEE. 



detailed above, I am inclined to think that the Cirroteuthidse belong to the deep-water 

 rather than to the shallow seas. 



As regards their habits we are quite in the dark. Eeinhardt and Prosch in their 

 treatise upon Cirroteuthis millleri confessed their entire ignorance of this matter, and 

 though they held out the hope that Dr. Eudolph would do something to enlighten the 

 scientific world on this head, still the darkness remains as great as ever — whether the 

 huge umbrella serves only for swimming, or whether it is also a kind of fishing net ; what 

 is the function of the cirri between the suckers ? are they tactile like the long fringes of 

 certain deep-sea fish ? or do they serve to create a current sweeping particles of food to 

 the mouth as already suggested (p. 56)? Even as regards the food of Cirroteuthis I 

 can give no information, for all the specimens in the Challenger collection were either so 

 fragmentary that it was impossible to examine their stomachs, or else these were 

 empty. The intestine of Cirroteuthis magna contained a mass of pulpy material in 

 which I found no recognisable fragments. 



Another genus, which there is reason to regard as an inhabitant of the deep sea, is 

 Bathyteuthis, the type specimen of which was dredged by the Challenger in the 

 Southern Ocean, north-west of Kerguelen, from a depth of 1600 fathoms; and quite 

 recently Professor Verrill has described, under the name Benthoteuthis, two other specimens 

 from 600 and 1073 fathoms in the North Atlantic, obviously belonging to the same 

 genus. ^ In the course of his description he calls attention to the embryonic characters of 

 these animals, which indeed are too striking to escape notice, but these same characters 

 may also point to the deep sea as the probable home of the species. 



For the small fins seem but ill adapted for a pelagic life, and the minuteness of the 

 suckers with which the arms and tentacles are provided seem little fitted for raptorial 

 purposes, while the great size of the eyes is known to be a character of frequent occur- 

 rence in deep-sea animals, in addition to which the large buccal membrane may serve the 

 purpose of collecting food from an oozy bottom. 



A third genus which may perhaps be abyssal is Mastigoteuthis, Verrill, of which at 

 present only one species is known, Mastigoteuthis agassizii, which has been dredged 

 by the U.S. S. "Blake" and by the Fish Commission in depths varying from 647 to 

 2516 fathoms, whUe the Challenger brought home a single tentacle which adhered to 

 the dredge-rope at Station 2 in the eastern part of the North Atlantic, where the depth 

 was 1945 fathoms. 



It will be seen that this species presents a great contrast to the last mentioned in the 

 fin, which is exceedingly large, quite as large as in any of the pelagic forms ; this would 

 seem to indicate that although the animal may dwell in the deep sea, it by no means 

 leads a sedentary existence ; the two genera resemble each other, however, in the form of 

 the tentacles, which are long, cylindrical and taper to points at the extremities instead of 



1 Trans. Conned. Acad., vol. vi. pp. 401-403, 1885. 



