COLOSSAL CUTTLEFISHES. 
BY A. S. PACKARD, JR. 
THERE is a prevalent opinion among seamen that the largest 
being that swims is a colossal squid or cuttlefish. As a matter of 
` fact there are immense squids which range the high seas, often 
forming the food of the sperm whale. It is these gigantic animals 
which have on rare occasions been seen by fishermen and others, 
which have given rise in past ages to the stories of the kraken. 
This animal was supposed to be large enough to form islands in 
the sea, and the well-known hoax of Denys Montfort represents 
a “kraken octopod” in the act of scuttling a three-masted ship. 
The first authentic records of these colossal squids will be found in 
a forthcoming memoir by Professor Steenstrup, the distinguished 
Director of the Zoological Museum of the University at Copen- 
hagen. From the proof-sheets and copy of the first plate illus- 
trating it which he generously placed in my hands, I find several 
authentic cases of the occurrence of gigantic squids on the Euro- 
pean coast. In the middle of the sixteenth century (1549) there 
was found at Malmö, in Sweden, a large squid, called monk fish or 
sea monk (sémunk), and designated by Gesner as Monachus 
marinus. We shall refer to this animal again. 
In 1639, 1798 and 1853, specimens of gigantic squids, now pre- 
served in the museum at Copenhagen, occurred on the north coast 
of Denmark, and in 1662 another animal of ‘this sort, the Ommato- 
strephes pteropus of Steenstrup, portions of which are in Prof. 
Steenstrup’s collection, was found on the coast of Holland. 
The specimen found in 1853, on the shores of the Cattegat, was 
represented only by the horny beaks which were over four inches 
in length (about the size of the beak figured on page 93). This 
is described by Prof. Steenstrup under the name of Architeuthis 
monachus. 
The most interesting discovery, however, was from the neigh- 
borhood of the Bahamas, in latitude 31° N., and longitude 10. Ws 
Specimens of the horny jaws, hooks, arms, sucking disks and 
other parts of a cuttlefish over eighteen feet long, were nye 
i; 
aw, 
