PAPER X .\rTILU8. 



Those weird, horrifying creatures, the Octopi, are very soft- 

 bodied, and live on shore just below or at low-water mark, or 

 in deeper water. They have no shell or pen. Octopus punc- 

 tatus Gabb expands 4$ metres (14 feet) from tip to tip of the 

 outstretched arms. They are brought of this size into the 

 markets of San Francisco, where they are eaten by Italians 

 and Chinese. An Indian woman at Victoria, Vancouver 

 Island, in 1877, was seized and drowned by an Octopus, prob- 

 ably of this species, while bathing on the shore. Smaller spe- 

 cies on coral reefs sometimes seize collectors or natives, and 

 fastening t) them with their relentless suckered arms tire 

 and frighten to death the hapless victim. Octopus Bairdii 

 Verrill (Fig. 224) inhabits the Gulf of Maine at from fifty 

 to one hundred fathoms. 



The Argonauta, or paper nautilus, has a beautiful, delicate 

 shell. A. argo lives in the Mediterranean, but in rare cases 

 has been thrown ashore at New Jersey and Florida. The 

 animal lives in the shell, but is not permanently attached to 

 it, the shell not being chambered, and holds on to the 

 sides by the greatly expanded terminations of two of its 

 arms, which secrete the shell. The males are very small, not 

 more than five centimetres (one inch) in length. During 

 the reproductive season the third left arm becomes larger 

 and different in form from the others, and becoming encysted 

 is finally detached from the body, and deposited by the male 

 within the mantle-cavity of the female, where the eggs in a 

 way unknown are fertilized by the spermatic bodies. The 

 free arm was supposed originally to be a parasitic worm, and 

 was described under the name of Hectocotylus. 



The living species of Cephalopods have a wide geographi- 

 cal range, and a high antiquity, the earliest forms appearing 

 in the Lower Silurian Period, while the type culminated in 

 the Liassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods. 



CLASS III. CEPHALOPODA. 



Mollusks with the head-lobe divided into arms, usually provided icith 

 suckers; eyes more highly organized than in any other invertebrates ; 



