78 THE OCTOPUS, 



an octopus, no matter how long it might have lived in confine- 

 ment, without finding the ink-bag fairly charged, though some 

 of its contents are sometimes emitted when the animal is at the 

 point of death. 



The cuttle {Sepia) discharges it on the slightest provocation ; 

 and this is sometimes very troublesome and annoying when this 

 species is exhibited in an aquarium. The quantity of water its ink 

 will obscure is really surprising. The fluid is secreted with amazing 

 rapidity, and the black ejection frequently occurs several times in 

 succession. 1 have often seen a cuttle completely spoil in a few 

 seconds all the water in a tank containing a thousand gallons. 



When first taken, the Sepia is most sensitively timid. Its keen, 

 unwinking eye watches for, and perceives the slightest movement 

 of its captor ; and if even most cautiously looked at from above, its 

 ink is belched forth in eddying volumes, rolling over and over like 

 the smoke which follows the discharge of a great gun from a ship's 

 port, and mixes with marvellous rapidity with the water, whilst 

 the animal simultaneously recedes to the best shelter it can find. 



But, like all of its class, the Sepia is very intelligent. It soon 

 learns to discriminate between friend and foe, and ultimately 

 becomes very tame, and ceases to shoot its ink, unless it be 

 teased and excited. 



Professor Owen has remarked that the ejection of the ink of 

 the cephalopods serves by its colour as a means of defence, as 

 corresponding secretions in some of the mammalia by their odour. 



It is worthy of notice that the Pearly Nautilus and the allied 

 fossil forms are without this means of concealment, which their 

 strong external shells renders unnecessary for their protection. 



Fishermen are well acquainted with the fact that the cephalopods 

 — at any rate, our British representatives of the Sepiidce^ Cala- 

 maries, and Oetopoda — habitually discharge, when taken, a jet of 

 water, and the two former sometimes their ink, in the faces of 

 their captors. It has been regarded gs doubtful whether this is 

 an intentional act, or whether it is accidental, and consequent on 



