62 ITS MANNER OF BURROWING. 



floor of his prison. But introduce him while in health 

 into an Aquarium where living sea-plants are perpe- 

 tually revivifying the water, and where the bottom, 

 varied with sand, gravel, and pieces of rock, imitates 

 the natural floor of the sea, and you will soon see 

 other particulars in the economy of our little friend, 

 which will, I doubt not, charm you as much as they 

 have pleased me. 



The Sepiola is a burrower ; and very cleverly and 

 ingeniously does it perform a task which we might at 

 first suppose a somewhat awkward one, — the insertion 

 of its round corpulent body into the sand or gravel. 

 Watch it as it approaches the bottom, after a season 

 of hovering play, such as I have described. It drops 

 down to within an inch of the sand, then hangs sus- 

 pended, as if surveying the ground for a suitable bed. 

 Presently it selects a spot ; the first indication of its 

 choice being that a hollow about the size of a silver 

 fourpence is forcibly blown out of the sand imme- 

 diately beneath the group of pendent arms. Into the 

 cavity so made the little animal drops ; at that instant 

 the sand is blown out on all sides from beneath the 

 body backward, and the abdomen is thrust downward 

 before the cloud of sand which has been blown up 

 settles, but which presently falls around and upon the 

 body. Another forcible pufl" in front, one on each 

 side, and another behind, follow in quick succession, 

 the fine sand displaced at each blast settling round 

 the animal, as it thrusts itself into the hollow thus 

 more and more deepened. 



I was not at first quite sure by what agency these 

 blowings, so admirably efiective and suited to the 



