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And in its agony it threw up a number
of large objects, which the Prince, dimly perceiving they were strange and
important, was, by a happy expedient, able to secure before they sank. He
set his screws in motion, and kept them circling in the vortices thus
created until a boat could be lowered. And these specimens were whole
cephalopods and fragments of cephalopods, some of gigantic proportions,
and almost all of them unknown to science!
It would seem, indeed, that these large and agile creatures, living in the
middle depths of the sea, must, to a large extent, for ever remain unknown
to us, since under water they are too nimble for nets, and it is only by
such rare, unlooked-for accidents that specimens can be obtained. In the
case of _Haploteuthis ferox_, for instance, we are still altogether
ignorant of its habitat, as ignorant as we are of the breeding-ground of
the herring or the sea-ways of the salmon. And zoologists are altogether
at a loss to account for its sudden appearance on our coast.


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