48 
SEA MONSTERS UNMASKED. 
are too technical for discussion here. This specimen was 
photographed as it lay upon the beach by M. Cazin, the 
photographer to the expedition. 
The following account of the still more recent capture of 
a large squid off the west coast of Ireland was given in the 
Zoologist of June 1875, by Sergeant Thomas O'Connor, of 
the Royal Irish Constabulary : — 
On the 26th of April, 1875, ^ very large calamary was met 
with on the north-west of Boffin Island, Connemara. The crew of 
a * curragh ' (a boat made like the ' coracle,' with wooden ribs 
covered with tarred canvas) observed to seaward a large floating 
mass, surrounded by gulls. They pulled out to it, believing it to 
be wreck, but to their astonishment found it was an enormous 
cuttle-fish, lying perfectly still, as if basking on the surface of the 
water. Paddling up with caution, they lopped off one of its arms. 
The animal immediately set out to sea, rushing through the water 
at a tremendous pace. The men gave chase, and, after a hard 
pull in their frail canvas craft, came up with it, five miles out in 
the open Atlantic, and severed another of its arms and the head. 
These portions are now in the Dublin Museum. The shorter 
arms measure, each, eight feet in length, and fifteen inches round 
the base : the tentacular arms are said to have been thirty feet 
long. The body sank." 
Finally, there is in our own national collection, preserved 
in spirit in a tall glass jar, a single arm of a huge cephalopod, 
which, by the kindness and courtesy of the ofificers of the 
department, I was permitted to examine and measure when 
I first described it, in May, 1873. It is 9 feet long, and 12 
inches in circumference at the base, tapering gradually to a 
fine point. It has about 300 suckers, pedunculated, or set 
on tubular footstalks, placed alternately in two rows, and 
having serrated, horny rings, but no hooks ; the diameter 
of the largest of these rings is half an inch ; the smallest is 
not larger than a pin's head. This is one of the eight 
