The circumstances under which the first was seen, as sensationally described by the Rev. M. Harvey, Presbyterian minister of St. John’s, Newfoundland, in a letter to Principal Dawson, of McGill College, were, briefly and soberly, as follows:—Two fishermen were out in a small punt on the 26th of October, 1873, near the eastern end of Belle Isle, Conception Bay, about nine miles from St. John’s. Observing some object floating on the water at a short distance they rowed towards it, supposing it to be the _débris_ of a wreck. On reaching it one of the men struck it with his “gaff” when immediately it showed signs of life, and shot out its two tentacular arms, as if to seize its antagonists. One of the men severed both arms with an axe as they lay on the gunwale of the boat, whereupon the animal moved off, and ejected a quantity of inky fluid which darkened the surrounding water for a considerable distance. The men went home and magnified their adventure. They “estimated” the body to have been 60 feet in length and 10 feet across the tail fin; and declared that when the “fish” attacked them “it reared a parrot-like beak which was as big as a six-gallon keg.” All this Mr. Harvey appears to have been willing to believe, and relates without the expression of a doubt. Fortunately, he was able to obtain from the fishermen a portion of one of the tentacular arms which they had chopped off with the axe, and it is now in the St. John’s Museum. By careful calculation of its girth, the breadth and circumference of the expanded sucker-bearing portion at its extremity, and the diameter of the suckers, Professor Verrill, of Yale College, has computed its dimensions as follows:—Length of body 10 feet; diameter of body 2 feet 5 inches. Long tentacular arms 32 feet; head 2 feet—total length about 44 feet. The upper mandible of the beak, instead of being “as large as a six-gallon keg” would be about 3 inches long, and the lower mandible 1½ inch long. From the size of the large suckers relatively to those of another specimen to be presently described, he regards it as probable that this individual was a female. In November, 1874,—about three weeks after the occurrence in Conception Bay—a calamary somewhat smaller than the preceding, but of the same species, also came into Mr. Harvey’s possession. Three fishermen, when hauling their herring-net in Logie bay, about three miles from St. John’s, found the huge animal entangled in its folds. With great difficulty they succeeded in despatching it and bringing it ashore, being compelled to cut off its head before they could get it into their boat.