2 
THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER, 
this Spirulci , 1 often reproduced, but this precious specimen disappeared without having 
been further studied. 2 
The English Expedition to the Congo procured a fragment of Spirula (the posterior 
extremity with the shell), which was deposited in the British Museum. 3 In 1836, several 
Spirulse, not so complete as that of Peron, were taken by the French corvette “ La 
Recherche.’ 4 upon the most perfect of which the first anatomical sketch of the genus, 
by de Blainville, was based ; 5 he recognised especially the existence of a single pair 
of gills. The first work of Owen 6 does not add much to the discoveries of de Blainville, 
his observations being likewise exclusively based on fragments. 
A single specimen almost entirely intact had been collected at this time ; it had already 
been figured by Gray 7 and by Reeve, s but it was only at a relatively recent period that 
the collector to whom it belonged would permit Owen to study its organisation. His 
memoir 9 is then the first description of a complete Spirula. Unfortunately, there are, 
in the text as well as in the illustrations of this work, not only a considerable number 
of important gaps, but a regrettable absence of even approximate precision, which render 
the results much less important than we would have expected, all the more so, as in the 
work there is a complete absence of the present ideas, tendencies, and pre-occupations of 
Zoology. This memoir has, however, remained the only one containing an anatomical 
description of a complete individual, for if Owen had the exceptional good fortune of 
dissecting a second complete Spirula (male), his observations were limited to making 
known, with as little precision, the sexual characters . 10 
Another complete individual was collected in 1865 near Port Jackson, but it was 
1 Freycinet, Voyage de decouvertes aux terres australes, pi. xxx. fig. 4, Paris, 1816. 
2 “ Malheureusement le seul et precieux specimen qu’ils rapportbrent conserve dans la liqueur, et trouv6 
mort et flottant en mer, s’est perdu au Museum, oil ils l’avaient depose, avant meme qu’une bonne description 
put nous consoler de cette perte ” (F^russac et d’Orbigny, Histoire naturelle des Cephalopodes acetabuliferes, 
p. 55, Paris, 1848). 
3 Gray, Catalogue of the Mollusca in the British Museum, Part I., Cephalopoda antepedia, 1849, p. 116. 
4 Lettre de M. Robert sur les Spirules, sur le lamentin du Senegal et sur l’existence dans cette region de 
l’Afrique de l’hyene tachetee ( Comptes rendus Acad. Sci. Paris, t. ii., 1836, pp. 362, 363 ; icl., in Ann. Sci. nat. 
\Zoologie\, ser. 2, t. v. pp. 226, 227, 1836). 
De Blainville, Quelques observations sur l’Anatomie de la Spirula et sur l’usage du siphon des coquilles 
polythalames [Ann. franc, et etrang. d’Anat. et de Phys., t. i., 1837, pp. 369-382). 
6 Owen, Description of two mutilated specimens of Spirula peronii, with some observations on S. australis 
and S. reticulata (Zoology of the voyage of H.M.S. “ Samarang,” Mollusca, part i. pp. 6-17, pi. iv., 1848). 
7 Gray, On the Animal of Spirula (Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 1, vol. xv., 1845, pp. 257-260, pi. xv.). 
8 Reeve, Elements of Conchology, 1846, p. 16, pi. A, figs. a-f. 
9 Owen, Supplementary Observations on the Anatomy of Spirula australis, Lamarck (Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., 
ser. 5, vol. iii., 1879, pp. 1-16, pis. i.-iii.). 
10 Owen, On the External and Structural Characters of the Male Spirula australis, Lam. (Proc. Zool.'Soc. 
London, 1880, p. 352, pi. xxxii.). Owen reports that this specimen was taken during the voyage of the “ Bonite.” 
Souleyet, however, who was on board this ship, says expressly that they had not succeeded in capturing a Spirula 
(Voyage autour du monde . . . sur la corvette la “ Bonite,” Zoologie, t. ii. p. 8, 1852). 
