ZOOLOGY. 485 
dantly, reaches a length of sixteen feet or a radial spread of 
nearly twenty-eight feet, but the whole mass is much smaller than 
that of the decapodous cephalopods of lesser length. In the Oc- 
topus above mentioned, the body would not exceed six inches in 
diameter and a foot in length, and the arms attain an extreme 
tenuity toward their tips. 
There can be no doubt whatever that some cephalopods in the 
warmer seas attain an enormous bulk as well as length. Capt. E. 
E. Smith, an experienced sperm whaler, and a careful and intel- 
ligent observer, informs me that he has seen portions of “ squid” 
arms vomited up by the whales in their death agony, as large 
as a “ beef barrel,” with suckers on them “as big as a dinner 
plate.” I have no doubt of the correctness of this statement. Mr. 
Henry G. Hanks, of the San Francisco Microscopical Society, 
reports having seen, when on a voyage in a trading schooner 
among the South Sea Islands, a cuttlefish near the surface of the 
water, “ as large as the schooner While this is rather indefinite 
still it indicates that specimens much larger than any yet recorded 
may probably exist in those regions. I have also rather vague 
reports of some enormous squid which have been observed in the 
Gulf of California.—W. H. DALL 
CRITICISM ON AN OBSERVATION OF Proressor THOMSON ON 
Cerrar Sponces, erc.—On looking over the “Depths of the 
Sea” by Prof. Wyville Thomson (Macmillan and Co., 1873), my 
attention was called to an observation which, when taken in con- 
nection with what had been said a few pages previously, seemed 
to me to do great injustice to our distinguished naturalist, Dr. 
Leidy. In the March number of the Amerrcan Narurauist for 
1870 there appeared “ Remarks on some curious Sponges,” by 
Prof. Leidy. In this article, after calling attention to the views 
of the nature of the sponge, Hyalonema, as offered by Gray, Val- 
enciennes, Milne-Edwards, Brandt, Bowerbank, Schultze, and Eh- 
renberg, Dr. Leidy observes, “ Prof. Schultze regards the sponge 
mass as situated at the bottom of the fascicle, and its flattened 
extremity with the large oscules at the base. This appears to me 
to be the general view, but it has occurred to me that the sponge 
mass in its natural position was uppermost and was moored by 
lts glassy cable, or rope of sand, to the sea bottom; perhaps to 
ine alge. This opinion is founded on the circumstance that in 
