A. E. Verrill — North American Cephalopods. 
389 
Atlantic, as simply the young and adult of the same species, but also 
that all the essential and peculiar features of the armature, both of 
the sessile and of the tentacular arms, including the special, lateral 
connective suckers and tubercles of the club, are present, though 
minute, even in the very young individuals, such as described by G. 
O. Sars. The fact that these characters have been overlooked is 
undoubtedly due, in many cases, to the imperfectly preserved speci- 
mens that have been examined. This was, at least, the case with 
the only American specimens seen by me until this year. They had 
all been taken from fish stomachs, and had lost more or less of their 
suckers and hooks. 
A careful direct comparison of the adult G. Fabricii , with the 
mutilated specimen which was last year described by me as Cheloteu- 
this rapax, has convinced me that they are identical, and, therefore, 
Cheloteuthis becomes a synonym of Lestoteuthis. Two of the char- 
acters, viz: the supposed presence of two central rotes of hooks on 
the ventral, as well as on the lateral arms, and the supposed ab- 
sence of the small marginal suckers on the lateral arms, relied upon 
for characterizing Cheloteuthis , were doubtless due to post-mortem 
changes. The ventral arms had lost the horny rings of the suckers, 
and the soft parts had taken a form exceedingly like that of the 
sheaths of the hooks of the lateral arms. But by the careful use of 
reagents I have been able to restore the original form of some of the 
distal ones sufficiently to show that they actually were sucker-sheaths. 
The third character, originally considered by me as more reliable and 
important, was the existence of the peculiar, lateral connective suck- 
ers and alternating tubercles on the tentacular club. This is noio 
shown by Professor Steenstrup to be a character of his Gonatus. But 
no one had previously described such a structure in connection with 
that genus. Even in the recent and excellent work of G. O. Sars, in 
which U G. amoenus ” is described in some detail, and freely illustrated, 
there is no indication of any such structure, although the armature 
of the club is figured (see my PI. 45, fig. lA), nor is the difference 
between the armature of the ventral and lateral arms indicated.* 
I add a new description of the genus Lestoteuthis , and also of my 
largest example of L. Fabricii. 
♦According to Gray, in Gonatus all the sessile arms bear four rows of similar and 
nearly equal suckers; according to G. 0. Sars they all have two central rows of 
sucker-hooks. My description (p. 290) was based mainly on the figures and description 
of G. 0. Sars, my only specimen, at that time, being an imperfect young one. 
