In April 1875 one of these large squids occurred off Boffin’s Island on the Irish coast. The crew of a curragh rowed out to it and attacked it, cutting off two of its arms and its head. The shorter arms measured 8 ft. in length and 15 in. in circumference; the tentacular arms are said to have been 30 ft. long. In the Natural History Museum in London there is one of the shorter arms of a specimen; this arm is 9 ft. in length and 11 in. in circumference, and the total length of the specimen, including body and tentacles, is stated to have been 40 ft. The maximum known length of these giant squids is stated to be 18 metres or about 58½ ft. All these gigantic specimens belong, so far as at present known, to one genus called Architeuthis, referred to the same family as Ommatostrephes. They are the largest known invertebrates.
These huge cuttle-fishes as well as those of various other oceanic species form the food of the cachalot or sperm whale, and F. T. Bullen, in his Cruise of the Cachalot and other writings, has graphically described contests which came under his own observation between the cachalot and its prey. The prince of Monaco in his yacht the “Princess Alice” was fortunate enough to be able to make a very complete scientific investigation in the case of one specimen of the cachalot, which not only confirmed the most important of Mr Bullen’s statements, but added considerably to our knowledge of oceanic cuttle-fishes. Off the Azores in July 1895 the prince in his yacht witnessed the killing of a cachalot 13.70 metres long (about 45 ft. 8 in.) by the crew of a whaler. The animal in its death-agony vomited the contents of its stomach, most of which were carefully collected and preserved, and afterwards examined by Professor Joubin. On the lips of the whale were found impressions several centimetres wide which corresponded exactly to the toothed suckers of the largest cuttle-fish arms obtained from its stomach. The contents of the stomach consisted entirely of cuttle-fish or parts of cuttle-fish, including the giant Architeuthis, and among them was the body, without the head, of a form new to science, distinguished by a condition of the external surface which occurs in no other species of the group. The surface of the skin was divided into small angular flat projections like scales, arranged in a regular spiral like the scales of a pine cone. From this character the new genus was called Lepidoteuthis. The body, without the head, of the specimen obtained was 86 cm. (nearly 3 ft.) in length.
The family Onychoteuthidae is remarkable for the formidable chitinous hooks borne on the arms. These hooks are special modifications of the toothed chitinous ring which covers the sucker-rim in the Decapoda generally. The teeth of the ring are often unequal in size, and in the Onychoteuthidae one tooth is enormously developed. The maximum development occurs in Veranya, found in the Mediterranean, where the suckers have lost their function and are merely fleshy projections bearing the hooks at their extremities. Onychoteuthis reaches a large size, the length of the body without the arms being in one specimen from the Pacific coast of America 8 ft. Figures of this and several of the following genera are given in the article [Cephalopoda].
In the family Cheiroteuthidae many of the species occur at abyssal depths of the ocean, and exhibit curious modifications of structure. In Cheiroteuthis itself the tentacular arms are very long and slender, and are not capable of retraction into pockets. In several species of this genus the suckers are no longer organs of adhesion, but are simple cups containing a network of filaments resembling a fishing net. In Histioteuthis and Histiopsis, as in some Octopods, the six dorsal arms are more or less completely united by a web, which also probably serves for capturing fish. In these two genera and in Calliteuthis the skin bears luminous organs. Cheiroteuthis has been taken at 2600 fms., Calliteuthis at 2200, Histiopsis at nearly 2000. Bathyteuthis, placed in the same family as Ommatostrephes, has been taken at 1700 fms.
The Cranchiidae are remarkable for their small size, the shortness of the ordinary arms, and the protuberance of the eyes, which in Taonius are actually on the ends of stalk-like outgrowths of the body. Cranchia is a deep-sea form taken at 1700 fms. Its body is pear-shaped, swollen posteriorly and quite narrow at the neck.
Spirula is distinguished from all other existing Cephalopods by the structure of its coiled shell, which in many respects resembles those of the extinct Ammonites, and is not completely internal. In the structure of the body the animal is a true cuttle-fish in the sense in which the term is here used, having ten arms and a perforated cornea. Three species are distinguished, and their empty shells occur abundantly on the shores of the tropical regions of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. In German the shells are known from their shape as Posthörnchen. They are common on the shores of the Azores. But the animal has very rarely been obtained; only a few specimens occur in museum collections. One specimen was taken by the “Challenger” in a deep-sea trawl, at a depth between 300 and 400 fathoms off Banda Neira in the Molluccas. Dr Willemoes Suhm, in describing the capture, stated that the specimen seemed to have been in the stomach of a fish, as its surface was slightly digested, and he thought it must have habits of concealment which usually prevent its capture, and that it was secured on this occasion only by the capture of the fish which had swallowed it. The fact that the shells are washed ashore in such large numbers is not fully explained. Possibly when freed from the animal the air in the chambers of the shell causes it to float, and in that case it would naturally be sooner or later washed ashore.
(J. T. C.)
CUTTS OF GOWRAN, JOHN CUTTS, Baron (1661-1707), British soldier and author, came of an Essex family. After a short university career at Catherine Hall, Cambridge, he came into the enjoyment of the family estates, but evinced a decided preference for the life of court and camp. The double ambition for military and literary fame inspired his first work, which appeared in 1685 under the name La Muse de cavalier, or An Apology for such Gentlemen as make Poetry their Diversion not their Business. The next year saw Cutts serving as a volunteer under Charles of Lorraine in Hungary, and it is said that he was the first to plant the imperialist standard on the walls at the storm of Buda (July 1686). In 1687 he published a book of verse entitled Poetical Exercises, and the following year we find him serving as lieutenant-colonel in Holland. General Hugh Mackay describes Cutts about this time as “pretty tall, lusty and well shaped, an agreeable companion with abundance of wit, affable and familiar, but too much seized with vanity and self-conceit.”
Lieutenant-Colonel Cutts was one of William’s companions in the English revolution of 1688, and in 1690 he went in command of a regiment of foot to the Irish war. He served with distinction at the battle of the Boyne, and at the siege of Limerick (where he was wounded), and King William created him Baron Cutts of Gowran in the kingdom of Ireland. In 1691 he succeeded to the command of the brigade of the prince of Hesse (wounded at Aughrim), and on the surrender of Limerick was appointed commandant of the town. Next year he served again in Flanders as a brigadier, his brigade of Mackay’s division being one of those almost destroyed at Steinkirk. At this battle Cutts himself was wounded. For some time after this, Lord Cutts was lieutenant-governor of the Isle of Wight, but he returned to active service in 1694, holding a command in the disastrous Brest expedition. He was one of Carmarthen’s companions in the daring reconnaissance of Camaret Bay, and was soon afterwards again wounded. He succeeded Talmash, the commander of the expedition (who died of his wounds), as colonel of the Coldstream Guards. Next year, after serving as a commissioner for settling the bank of Antwerp, he distinguished himself once more at the famous siege of Namur, winning for himself the name of “Salamander” by his indifference to the heaviest fire. Henceforward court service and war service alternated. He was deep in the confidence of William III., and acted as a diplomatic agent in the negotiations which ended in the peace of Ryswick. On the occasion of the great fire in Whitehall (1698) Cutts, at the head of the Coldstreams, earned afresh the honourable nickname of “the Salamander.” A little later we find Captain Richard Steele acting as his private secretary. In 1702, now a major-general, Cutts was serving under Marlborough in the opening campaign of the War of the Spanish Succession, and at the siege of Venloo, conspicuous as usual for romantic bravery, he led the stormers at Fort Saint Michael. His enemies, and even the survivors of the assault, were amazed at the success of a seemingly hare-brained enterprise. Probably, however, Cutts, who was now a veteran of great and varied experience, measured the factors of success and failure better than his critics. It was on this occasion that Swift lampooned the lieutenant-general in his Ode to a Salamander. He made the campaign of 1703 in Flanders, and in 1704, after a visit to England, he rejoined Marlborough on the banks of the Danube. At Blenheim he was third in command, and it was his division that bore the brunt of the desperate fighting at the village which gave its name to the battle.