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Show 1874.] MR. W. S. KENT ON A GIGANTIC CEPHALOPOD. 181 adventure lasted fully three hours, an interval which sufficed for one of the officers on board, Monsieur Rodolphe, to make a hasty sketch of the scene, afac simile of which is represented in the admirable marine text-book * Das Meer,' lately published in Berlin by Dr. Schleider. The commander of the ship, Captain Bouyer, and Consul Sabin Berthelot, then with him, additionally testify to the gigantic size of this creature, to the body alone of which they assigned a length of from 15 to 18 feet, the arms, according to the sketch, measuring something less. Satisfied as to the truth of this account, Crosse and Fischer have conferred upon this animal the name of Loligo bouyeri. N o portion of this last example having been preserved ; the same difficulty is attached to the determining of its exact specific identity with any other form encountered before or since, as seems to apply to Prof. Steenstrup's Architeuthis monachus and A. dux. The two fragments now preserved in the British and St. John's M u seums, in fact, apparently constitute the only substantial material at present available to work upon ; and of the two, that obtained for the latter institution is calculated to prove the more important. Especial value attaches itself to the form and mode of distribution of the suckers on the clubbed extremity of the two longer tentacles; and Mr. Harvey will render a great service to science by making a second careful examination and report in this direction on the example that has lately passed through his hands. In his brief account already given, no mention is made of horny uncini or claws in association with these suckers, a fact which suffices to indicate that the animal must not be classed with Onychoteuthis, Euoploteuthis*, or other of the armed Calamaries, but rather with Loligo, Sepioteuthis, and its allies, having only simple suckers. The evidence supplied by the shorter arm preserved in the British Museum points to a similar conclusion. The evidence already adduced seeming to indicate that this mighty Cephalopod will scarcely be found, upon more intimate acquaintance, to accord sufficiently with Loligo proper as to be placed in the same genus, I propose, provisionally, to create for it the new generic title of Megaloteuthis (megalos, huge; and teuthis, a cala-mary), and to further distinguish the particular species, of which there is now sufficient material for reidentification in the tentacle deposited in the St. John's Museum, as Megaloteuthis harveyi, in grateful acknowledgment of the source to which we are indebted for this most interesting and important accession to our previous knowledge of these formidable Mollusca. ADDENDA. Since the composition of the foregoing, an interesting article corroborating the Rev. M r . Harvey's account, and furnishing additional * In the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons is an arm of a species of this genus, E. unguiculata, found by Banks and Solander during Cook's first voyage, supposed to have been 6 feet long when perfect. The natives of the Polynesian Islands, who dive for shellfish, have a well-founded dread of these formidable animals. (Owen.) |