92 COLOSSAL CUTTLEFISHES. 
while lying at anchor on the Grand Banks on or about the 20th of 
a amt discovered something floating on the water, perhaps a 
. gun-shot from his schooner. The weather being fine and pleasant 
he ordered the boat lowered, and sent two men to learn — it 
might be; they returned reporting the object to be a mass of 
floating jelly, or something unknown to them. The Gaptitin then 
with hooks and gaffs and more men nok to investigate ; he found 
it quite dead, each end hanging under water, only the centre on 
its surface. After towing it alongside the schooner, he pases se is 
purchase or halyards to hoist the monster out of water, and o 
ing its head, declared it to be a squid, saying he had heard of wer 
of. that size, but never saw the like person e. -n a — got on 
board, the second hand or mate infor e he measured. the 
body with a rule and found it fifteen feet presen ar feet eight 
inches round. The long arijas were badly eaten; judged they 
might be nine or ten feet long ; two were shorter than the former, 
ge 
part with it. I learn from some older fishermen that years ago 
large squid were often taken on the Grand Banks, and whalers 
a captured whale that hisata forty feet in length. I ‘think the 
large squid is often mee’ in the northern oceans.’ 
Learning from Mr. Tarr that one of the crew had the horny 
jaws of the monster in his possession, I offered him a fair price for 
it for the museum of the Peabody Academy of Science, but he 
would not part with it. Through the kindness, however, of Mr. 
Tarr, I was enabled to obtain an imperfect photograph of it. The 
beak had been split open and spread apart, and photographed in 
this position. I took a photograph of it to Prof. Steenstrup who 
kindly spent some time with me in endeavoring to identify it from 
the specimens in the unrivalled collection of decapodous cephalo- 
pods in the museum of the Royal University. He decided that 
in all probability, so far as could be decided from such imperfect 
_ data, the beak must have belonged to the Architeuthis monachus 
: = Steenstrup. This is the “sea monk” which we haye previously 
_ noticed as having occurred on the coast of Cattegat in 1853, and 
which was also known to the naturalist Gesner, who wrote in the 
- z middle pr the sixteenth century. I also showed Prof. Steenstrup 
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