When the French expedition was sent to the Island of St. Paul, in 1874, for the purpose of observing the transit of Venus, which occurred on the 9th of December in that year, it was fortunately accompanied by an able zoologist, M. Ch. Velain. He reports[21] that on the 2nd of November a tidal wave cast upon the north shore of the island a great calamary which measured in total length nearly 23 feet, namely: length of body 7 feet; length of tentacles 16 feet. There are several points of interest connected with its generic characters, and M. Velain's grounds for regarding it as being of a previously unknown species, but they are too technical for discussion here. This specimen was photographed as it lay upon the beach by M. Cazin, the photographer to the expedition. [21] 'Comptes Rendus,' t. 80, 1875, p. 998. The following account of the still more recent capture of a large squid off the west coast of Ireland was given in the _Zoologist_ of June 1875, by Sergeant Thomas O'Connor, of the Royal Irish Constabulary:-- "On the 26th of April, 1875, a very large calamary was met with on the north-west of Boffin Island, Connemara. The crew of a 'curragh' (a boat made like the 'coracle,' with wooden ribs covered with tarred canvas) observed to seaward a large floating mass, surrounded by gulls. They pulled out to it, believing it to be wreck, but to their astonishment found it was an enormous cuttle-fish, lying perfectly still, as if basking on the surface of the water. Paddling up with caution, they lopped off one of its arms. The animal immediately set out to sea, rushing through the water at a tremendous pace. The men gave chase, and, after a hard pull in their frail canvas craft, came up with it, five miles out in the open Atlantic, and severed another of its arms and the head. These portions are now in the Dublin Museum. The shorter arms measure, each, eight feet in length, and fifteen inches round the base: the tentacular arms are said to have been thirty feet long. The body sank."