CEPHALOPODA. 
459 
strong odour of musk was inhaled by the spectators. This musk odour 
We have already noticed as being peculiar to many of the Cephalopods. 
The musket- shots not having produced the desired results, harpoons 
Were employed, hut they took no hold on the soft impalpable flesh of 
the marine monster. When it escaped from the harpoon it dived 
Under the ship, and came up again at the other side. They succeeded 
at last in getting it to bite at the harpoon, and in passing a rope 
found the posterior part of the animal. But when they attempted to 
hoist it out of the water the rope penetrated deeply into the flesh, 
and separated it into two parts, the head with the arms and tentacles 
dropping into the sea and making off, while the fins and posterior 
parts were brought on hoard : they weighed about forty pounds. 
The crew were eager to pursue, and would have launched a boat, 
hut the commander refused, fearing that the animal might capsize it. 
The object was not, in his opinion, one in which he could risk 
the fives of his crew. Pm XXIV. is copied from M. Berthelot’s 
coloured representation of this scene. “ It is probable,” M. Moquin- 
Tandon remarks, commenting on M. Berthelot's recital, “ that this 
colossal mollusc was sick or exhausted by some recent struggle with 
Some other monster of the deep, which would account for its having 
quitted its native rocks in the depths' of the ocean. Otherwise it 
Would have been more active in its movements, or it would have 
obscured the waves with the inky liquid which all the Cephalopods 
have at command. Judging from its size, it would carry at least a 
barrel of this black liquid, if it had not been exhausted in some recent 
struggle.” 
“ Is this mollusc a calmar r” asks the same writer. “ If we might 
Judge from the figure drawn by one of the officers of the Alecton 
during the struggle, and communicated by M. Berthelot, the animal 
had terminal fins, like the calmars ; but it lias eight equal arms, like 
the cuttle-fish. Now the calmars have ten, two of them being very 
long. Was this some intermediate species between the two ? Or 
must we admit, with MM. Crosse and Fischer, that the animal had lost 
its more formidable tentacles in some recent combat ?”* 
* Is it necessary to say that even this account — apparently -so well authenticated, 
not to speak of the representation drawn on the spot— should be taken “ cum granum 
salis?”— E d. 
