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Show 1874.] MR. W. S. KENT ON A GIGANTIC CEPHALOPOD. 179 feet from the boat, suddenly shot out from around its head several long arms of corpse-like fleshiness, grappling with them for the boat and seeking to envelop it in their folds. Only two of these reached the craft, and, owing to their length, went completely over and beyond it. Seizing his hachet with a desperate effort, one of the m en succeeded in severing these limbs with a single well-delivered blow; and the creature finding itself worsted, immediately disappeared beneath the waters, leaving in the boat its amputated members as a trophy of the terrible encounter. One of the arms was unfortunately destroyed before its value was known; but the other, when brought to St. John's and examined by the Rev. M . Harvey, was found to measure no less than nineteen feet; and the fisherman w h o acted as surgeon declares there must have been at least six feet more of this arm left attached to the monster's body. This separated member is described by M r . Harvey as being livid in colour and pointed at its extremity, where alone it is covered with rows of cartilaginous horny suckers, each about the size of a quarter-dollar. Unfortunately, the fishermen were too m u c h frightened during the short time the adventure lasted to form a reliable opinion of the length of the animal's body ; under the influence of terror, they set it down at forty feet, an estimate which, notwithstanding the extraordinary dimensions of the arm secured, must be received as a considerable exaggeration. Mr. Harvey's supposition that this monster probably belonged to the Teuthidse, or that section of the Dibranchiate Cephalopoda including the Squids and Calamaries, distinguished by the possession of eight sessile arms and two additional tentacula of much greater length, is entirely borne out by the description communicated ; and fortunately we are in possession of other substantial evidence which proves beyond doubt the existence of a species of Calamary as formidable in point of size as the one just described. In the vaults of the British Museum, in fact, there has been long since preserved a single arm of a huge cephalopod, measuring from one end to the other no less than nine feet; the circumference at its base is eleven inches; and thence it gradually tapers off, terminating in a fine point. T he suckers, which cover the whole of the under surface of this arm, are distributed in two alternating rows, numbering from 145 to 150 suckers to each row, those at the base having a diameter of half an inch, and gradually decreasing in size as they approach the further attenuate extremity. N o authenticated record of the circumstances attending the capture of this remarkable specimen, or of the locality whence obtained, appears to have been preserved; but it is believed to have come from the South-American coast. The fact that the suckers of this colossal arm are all pedunculated or attached through the medium of a slender stalk, instead of being sessile as in the Octopus, has been already mentioned by myself* as indicating that the creature belonged to the ten-armed Teu- * Article on the " Octopus " in the Official Guide-book to the Brighton Aquarium, by W . Saville Kent, then curator, 1st edition, Brighton, 1873, also in 2nd edition since published, witb the author's name excised. |
