their Food and Digestive Organs, ^ 1 7 



and they are amply furnished with the necessary weapons. 

 The long flexible arms which encircle the head are set along 

 their inner aspects, with numerous cup-like suckers, which 

 the animal can fix to any object, and the adhesion is 

 strengthened by a horny ring round the edge of each sucker 

 often pointed with sharp curved teeth. {Jig, 54-. a,) " When 



an animal of this kind approaches 

 any body with its suckers, in order 

 to apply them more intimately, it 

 presents them in a flat or plain state ; 

 and when the suckers are thus fixed 

 by the harmony of surfaces, the ani- 

 mal contracts the sphincter, and 

 forms a cavity in the centre, which 

 becomes a vacuum. By this con- 

 trivance, the sucker adheres to the 

 surface with a force proportioned to 

 its area, and the weight of the column 

 of air and water, of which it con- 

 '^tfedVrfo^Ktl'oViUgo stitutes the basc. This force, mul- 

 ^^s*"^^^ tiplied by the number of suckers, 



gives that by which all or a part of the feet adhere to any 

 body. This power of adhesion is such, that it is easier to 

 tear off the feet than to separate them from the substance to 

 which the animal chooses to attach itself." (Cuvier, Comp, 

 Anat., trans., i. 432.) It must, then, be a fearful thing, for 

 any living creature, to come within their compass ; for, en- 

 tangled in the slimy serpentine grasp of eight or ten arms, 

 and held by the pressure of some hundreds of exhausted cups, 

 escape is hopeless, and the struggles of the hapless victim, 

 by bringing its body into more rapid contact with the suckers 

 not yet applied, only accelerate its fate. 



The digestive system of this tribe is less uniform in struc- 

 ture than, from the sameness of their food, we might at first 

 suppose; but, in sketches of the very general character to which 

 I limit myself, I pass over the peculiarities of tribes, to notice 

 little beyond what is common to the class. The mouth, 

 formed by a puckered fold of the skin, is placed at the base, 

 and in the centre of the circle formed by the arms, and is 

 armed with two powerful corneous jaws, having a vertical mo- 

 tion : they are fashioned to the resemblance of a parrot's bill 

 [Jig, 54-. b), and are well adapted to tear their prey piece- 

 meal, or crush the hard shell, especially when, as in the 

 A^autili, their tips are hnrdened and calcareous. Between the 

 jaws lies the tongue, adherent to the platform of the mouth, 

 Vol. VII.— No. 41. e e 



