60 CONCEALED ARMS. 



tlie bundle of arms from above and below in torn, 

 now grouped together, and now tlirown all abroad in 

 anger at being teased ; still you can make out but 

 eight. It was not until after many trials that I at 

 length caught a peep at the missing organs — the pair 

 of long arms, — and discovered that it is the animal's 

 habit to carry them closely coiled up into little balls, 

 and packed down upon the mouth at the bottom of 

 the oral cavity. If we manage to insert the point of 

 a pin in the coil, and stretch out the spiral filament, 

 the little creature impatiently snatches it away, and 

 in a twinkling rolls it up again. A zealous votary of 

 the circular system would seize on this analogy with 

 the spirally folded tongue of a moth, and triumphantly 

 adduce it as additional proof that the Cephalopoda 

 represent, in the Molluscan circle, the Lepidoptera 

 among insects. 



While thus hovering motionless in the water, the 

 Sepiola presents a fair opportunity for observing its 

 curious transitions of colour, which are great and 

 sudden. We can scarcely assign any hue proper to 

 it. Now it is nearly white, or pellucid, with a faint 

 band of brown specks along the back, through which 

 the internal viscera glisten like silver. In an instant 

 the specks become spots, that come and go, and 

 change their dimensions and their forms, and appear 

 and disappear momentarily. The whole body, — arms, 

 fins, and all, — the parts which before appeared free, 

 display the spots, which, when looked at attentively, 

 are seen to play about it in the most singular manner, 

 having the appearance of a coloured fluid, injected 

 with constantly varying force into cavities in the 



