ON CEPHALOPODA. 301 
ject been renewed by any author, not even by Halma, the 
editor of his great work. 
With respect to the argonauts it is unnecessary to add any 
thing further, as all that we have now said entirely refers to 
them. 
We now come to speak of the CALAMARY, which was 
called revfoc by the Greeks, and LoLiIego by the Latins. 
The word calamary itself is derived from that of calamarium, 
which in low Latinity signifies a portable writing-desk, or 
escritoire, with ink, pens, and a pen-knife. It has been 
given to these animals because their body has a little of the 
cylindrical form of these sorts of escritoires, and contains a 
sort of pen in the back and ink in the interior. 
The organization of the calamary is very like that of the 
sepia, but the body is usually more elongated, and almost 
cylindrical. ‘The product of the female is a very considerable 
mass of oval eggs, disposed in series round an axis in the 
form of a cord; this cylindrical mass is about three feet in 
length and two in diameter. Bohadsch, who observed one of 
these dimensions, having counted the number of series, and 
that of the eggs in each, found that it contained 39,760 eggs. 
They are at first of a yellowish colour, but afterwards they 
become limpid, and finally blue. 
The calamaries appear to possess both general and parti- 
cular sensibility, still more developed than in the sepiz and 
octopi. Their sight especially seems to be very fine; their 
muscular activity is not less great : they move with the greatest 
rapidity in the deep sea, which they never quit unless driven 
from it by some violent impulse, as is the case with the flying- 
fish; for this they employ the fins with which their sac is 
furnished, or rather the contractions of the sac itself, in ex- 
pelling the water which it contains. In their general move- 
ments from place to place they hold their tentacular append- 
ages motionless, and crowded into a point one against the 
