ANOTHER SEASIDE TALK. 



135 



saw; it is not at all like the starfish that I brought 

 yesterday, except that it has a star with a mouth 

 in the center. It has eight arms instead of five, 

 and there is a big round knob in the center, and 

 what looks like a pair of eyes. And it is so lively. 

 Can it be a kind of starfish? 



Not at all; though I do not 

 wonder at your mistake. It is a 

 Cuttle-fish, or Octopus. It is 

 really a mollusk, but very dif- 

 ferent from a snail or a clam. 

 The eight arms have suckers 

 under them, and these arms are 

 to seize and hold the food, much 

 like the points of a starfish. But 

 the cuttle has a beak, and does 

 not have to turn himself inside 

 out when he eats. Your cuttle 

 is a very little one, but they have been found many 

 feet in length, — so large, in fact, that a man would 

 not like to meet one of them. 



A near relative of the cuttle is the Squid, which 

 has a long, slender body with a fin at the end. 

 The head has a ring of tentacles around it, like 

 the cuttle-fish, and the creature has two staring 

 eyes. Great numbers of small squid are caught 

 at night by Chinese fishermen. They go out on 



Figure 



