Murray.] 162 T oy. 19, 



extent borne out by the fragment of the animal which was severed, 

 and of which the photograph will give you a fair idea. The tentacle 

 measured on the 31st of October, when I first saw it, after it had 

 been several days in strong brine, and shrunk in consequence, seven- 

 teen feet; but was said to have measured nineteen feet previously. 

 When it was first landed at a place called Portugal Cove, in Concep- 

 tion Bay, and within nine miles of St. John, some six feet was cut 

 off the inner end of this arm, and Picot asserts that the original 

 incision was at least ten feet from its articulation with the body. Ac- 

 cordingly the whole length of the arm must have been from thirty- 

 three to thirty-five feet, The beak of the creature Picot described 

 as being about the size of a six gallon keg. 



The Rev. Mr. Gabriel, now residing at Portugal Cove, but who 

 formerly resided at a place called Lamalein, on the south coast of the 

 island, states that, in the winter of 1870 and 1871, two entire cuttle 

 fish were stranded on the beach near that place, which measured re- 

 spectively forty and forty-seven feet. 



The man Picot says he saw the animal very distinctly for some 

 time after it had been mutilated, swimming stern foremost with its 

 tail above the water's edge, and that its general color was a pale 

 pinkish, resembling that of the common squid. 



The following is an exact copy of the memoranda I made on first 

 inspecting this remarkable tentacle on the 31st of October. The 

 total length of the fragment from the last incision to the extremity, 

 seventeen feet. The extremity of the arm or terminating two and 

 one-half feet is flattened, and somewhat in shape like a narrow pad- 

 dle, tapering toward the end to a sharpish point. The thickest part 

 of this terminal appendage is about six inches in circumference. 



The inner fourteen and one-half feet is rounded in form, varying 

 in thickness from three and one -half to four inches in diameter, or 

 about the ordinary size of a man's wrist. On what I shall call the 

 ventral side of this fourteen and one-half feet, there is a set of small 

 tubercles or mammillse which, at the end nearest the articulation, 

 are about two feet apart, but become much closer and more numerous 

 towards the extremity. Some small valve-like sucking denticulated 

 cups are distributed along the area near the tubercles. 



At the extreme point of the paddle-shaped extremity, and also at 

 its junction with the rounded part, there is a cluster of small denticu- 

 lated sucking cups, each cluster containing from fifty to seventy in- 

 dividual cups. The smallest of these is not larger than the head of 



