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rocket, a creature glowing with phosphorescence; 

 and as it shoots above the surface its siphon spouts 

 a stream of water which falls like a shower of shin- 

 ing sparks ... It is at this conjuncture that I 

 am overwhelmed with mortification. 



After all, how little I really know about Loligo! 

 Behind this apparently purposeless yet mysterious 

 behavior, there must be some important but com- 

 monplace cause. What is that cause? If this can be 

 determined, doubtless it will reveal not a few of 

 its other actions in a new and unsuspected light. 



It is one thing to observe a fact; it is quite 

 another thing to interpret it. It had been seemingly 

 simple to deduce the probable length of the squid's 

 life partly from the fact that this mollusk belongs 

 to a phylum, the other members of which are notori- 

 ously short-lived, and partly from the circumstance 

 of its periodic or triennial abundance. On an aver- 

 age of every three or four years, this Long Island 

 Sound variety shows that the maximum increase 

 in the numbers of adults is an almost certain pre- 

 lude of a season following in which they exhibit 

 the greatest scarcity — an order of occurrence in- 

 dicating only too patently that it bears some rela- 

 tion to its length of life. Nor had it been less 



T349] 



