The shell is similar to that of Loligo, but ends aborally in a little hollow cone. The suckers bear chitinous rings which are toothed along the outer edge. The tentacular arms are rather short and thick. Two specimens of allied species have been taken on British coasts, one of which, captured off Salcombe in Devonshire in 1892, had a body 66 cm. (22 in.) long, and tentacular arms 64 cm. long, or nearly the same length as the body. Most of the species of Ommatostrephes are naturally gregarious and oceanic, and occur in the open seas in all latitudes, swimming near the surface and often leaping out of the water. They are largely devoured by albatrosses and other marine birds, and by Cetacea. They are used as bait in the Newfoundland cod fishery.
Some of the oceanic cuttle-fishes reach a very large size, and the stories of these ocean monsters which are narrated by the older writers, though to some extent exaggerated, are now known to be founded on fact. The figure given by one author of a gigantic Cephalopod rising from the surface of the ocean and embracing with its arms a full-rigged ship does not accurately represent an actual occurrence, but on the other hand there are authentic instances on record of fishermen in small boats on the banks of Newfoundland being in great peril in consequence of large squids throwing their arms across their boats. In November 1874 a specimen was brought ashore at St John’s, Newfoundland, which had been caught in herring nets. Its body was 7 ft. long, its fins 22 in. broad, and its tentacular arms 24 ft. long. Several others have been recorded, taken in the same region, which were as large or larger, the total length of the body and tentacles together varying from 30 to 52 ft., and the estimated weight of one of them being 1000 ℔.
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 5812 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
