36 
SEA MONSTERS UNMASKED. 
petent observers. In so doing we must bear in mind that 
until Professor Owen propounded the very clear and con- 
venient classification now universally adopted, the squids, 
as well as the eight-footed OctopidcB, were all grouped 
under the title of Sepia. 
Pernetty, describing a voyage made by him in the years 
1763-4,* mentions gigantic cuttles met with in the Southern 
Seas. 
Shortly afterwards, during the first week in March 1769, 
Banks and Solander, the scientific fellow-voyagers with 
Lieutenant Cook (afterwards the celebrated Captain Cook), 
in H.M.S. Endeavour, found in the North Pacific, in lati- 
tude 38° 44' S. and longitude 110° 33' W., a large calamary 
which had just been killed by the birds, and was floating in 
a mangled condition on the water. Its arms were furnished, 
instead of suckers, with a double row of very sharp talons, 
which resembled those of a cat, and, like them, were retract- 
able into a sheath of skin from which they might be thrust 
at pleasure. Of this cuttle they say, with evident pleasur- 
able remembrance of a savoury meal, they made one of the 
best soups they ever tasted. Professor Owen tells us, in the 
paper already referred to, that when he was curator of the 
Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, and 
preparing, in 1829, his first catalogue thereof, he was struck 
with the number of oceanic invertebrates which Hunter had 
obtained. He learned from Mr. Clift that Hunter had sup- 
plied Mr. (afterwards Sir Joseph) Banks with stoppered 
bottles containing alcohol, in which to preserve the new 
marine animals that he might meet with during the circum- 
navigatory voyage about to be undertaken by Cook. 
Thinking it probable that Banks might have stowed some 
parts of this great hook-armed squid in one of these bottles for 
* * Voyage aux lies Malouines.' 
