Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/361

Rh that they are not limited to the northern waters is certain. The late Captain Frederick Reimer, of New Jersey, a very intelligent observer, who was in Beaufort Harbor, North Carolina, in 1862, described one that he saw there which measured fully thirty feet in length. Any one who has seen the specimen captured at Newfoundland can readily conceive how such a monster could stretch out its two long arms and seize its prey. These arms together form a pair of powerful pincers at their extreme ends, and are furnished for their whole length with two rows of



perfect sucking-disks, or some two thousand air-pumps; the edges are also cut into sharp, saw-like teeth, as hard as steel, and these are buried in the flesh of its prey. With all these appliances it could easily reach a distance of twenty-five feet, and bring the body of a man to its mouth,