their Food and Digestive Organs. 419 



attachment swells out into a large membranous crop, of the 

 appearance of which, in the Octopus ventricosus, at least, I 

 cannot give you a better idea than by comparing it, both in 

 size and position, to the bulb of a small retort. The gizzard 

 LfiS' "^'^j ^6- ^) ^s ^ thick muscular organ, like the gizzard of 

 a fowl, and strongly corrugated internally in a longitudinal 

 direction: immediately beyond it, in the *Sepia and Octopodiae, 

 is situated a curious spiral appendage, laminated on the inte- 

 rior, into which the bile is poured ; but in the Z/oligo, instead 

 of this spiral caecum *, and, as it were, to compensate for its 

 deficiency of a crop, there is a very large membranous and 

 somewhat cylindrical bag {Jig. 55, 56. c), on the posterior and 

 upper part of which we trace vestiges of the spiral struc- 

 ture, for there a fatty substance is so disposed as to assume 

 that form, having the outer edges cut in a deeply serrated 

 manner {^g. 55, 56> d). I have found this bag always filled 

 with a grumous fluid, and it is undoubtedly the organ in which 

 digestion is principally effected and completed ; for it not only 

 receives the bile, but is itself, or the spiral part of it, supposed 

 to furnish a secretion analogous to that of the pancreas in 

 higher animals. The aperture between the gizzard and this 

 caecum is oblique and valvular, and another adjoining aperture 

 leads to the intestine {Jig. 55, 56. f e), which, like the oeso- 

 phagus, winds upwards along the surface of the liver to ter- 

 minate in the funnel, which is the common vent of all the 

 excrements. The liver is very large in all the genera of this 

 class, and must furnish a copious supply ; but, besides this, and 

 the secretions of the other accessary organs to good digestion, 

 Sir E. Home believes that the inky fluid is intended also to 

 have some effect upon the lower portion of the intestinal canal, 

 to enable this to extract from its contents " a secondary kind 

 of nourishment" (Comp. Anat., i. 369. and 393.); an opinion 

 not very probable in itself, and with but a few fanciful analo- 

 gies in its support. 



* " It may with greater propriety be denominated the duodenum^ as it 

 performs some of the offices of that part of the gut in the higher orders of 

 animals. This stomach is conical, closed at the distal extremity, and per- 

 forms about a turn and a half, like a spiral shell. Its inner surface is 

 covered with a ridge, which traverses it in a closely spiral direction." — 

 Fleming, FUl. ZooL, ii. 424. 



f In reference to these figures, it may be observed that they are copied 

 from nature; a remark which seems necessary, since they differ entirely from 

 Sir E, Home's figure of the stomach of Loligo vulgaris, or the ^epia Lo- 

 ligo of Linnaeus. Sir Everard's figure appears to have been taken from 

 a species of Octopus. 



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