ECONOMIC VALUE OF CUTTLE-FISHES. 89 



and feeling that if human teeth could make no more impression 

 on it than on the sole of an old boot, the human stomach incurred 

 risk of difficulties which all the well-known medical skill of our 

 good host might be unable to cure, I declined to sacrifice myself 

 to an idea, and ; well, I did not swallow it. 



The octopus had not been beaten. We were ! I afterwards saw 

 this little private experiment seriously described in a newspaper 

 paragraph, which was extensively quoted, as an endeavour to intro- . 

 duce to the public a new and valuable article of marketable food. / 



In my opinion, the squid, or sleeve {Loligo), is the best of the three. 

 Rondeletius recommends their being dressed with oil and vinegar. 

 On the Normandy coast they are boiled with onions and other 

 vegetables, the liquor being saved as good stock for soup. At 

 Marseilles they are stuffed with dried tendrils of the vine. The 

 Chinese and Japanese prefer them seasoned with vinegar and 

 ginger, and attribute to the flesh various medicinal properties. In 

 Mauritius and the neighbouring islands they are generally curried. 



The various genera of cuttle-fishes were held in high estimation 

 by the ancients ; and it was a custom of the Greeks to send them 

 out as presents on the fifth day after the birth of a child, and 

 before giving it a name. At the nuptial feast of Iphicrates, who 

 married the daughter of Cotys, King of Thrace, a hundred polypi 

 and sepise were served. The Greek epicures prized them most 

 when they contained "roe," and had them cooked with highly 

 seasoned sauces. The Lacedaemonians boiled them entire, and 

 were not disgusted by the black froth formed by their inky liquor 

 diffusing itself in the water. 



In " The Deipnosophists " of Athenseus are numerous quo- 

 tations from older writers relating to the use, as food, of the 

 various kinds of cuttle-fishes. Athenasus, who was an Egyptian, 

 born in Naucratis, a town on the left side of the Canopic mouth 

 of the Nile, lived and wrote in the first half of the third century. 

 He appears to have been imbued with a great love of learning, 

 in the pursuit of which he indulged in the most extensive and 



