SEPIAD^). CUTTLE. 257 



end of it a number of beautiful pieces of the cowrie, or 

 tiger-shell, are fastened one over another, like the scales 

 of a fish, until it is nearly the size of a turkey's egg", 

 and resembles the cowrie. It is suspended in a hori- 

 zontal position by a strong line, and lowered by the 

 fisherman from a small canoe, till it nearly reaches the 

 bottom. The fisherman jerks the line to cause the 

 shell to move, as if it were alive, and the jerking* 

 motion is called tootoofe, the name of the contrivance. 

 The cuttle-fish, attracted by the cowries, darts out one 

 of its arms, and then another, and so on, until it is 

 quite fastened among the openings between the pieces 

 of cowrie, when it is drawn up into the canoe and 

 secured. 



The natives of the South Seas have also another 

 special bait for the Octopus, which appears to differ 

 slightly from the kind already described. It is said 

 to be a rat-shaped bait, round which, when dangled in 

 the water, over the edge of the reef, the Octopus wraps 

 himself so tenaciously as to enable the fisherman to pull 

 him out. ... In the centre of this bait is a piece of 

 quartz, sometimes of an agate species, rubbed into a 

 cone. This is backed by pieces of mottled shell kept 

 in place by cocoa-nut fibre, which passes underneath, 

 and extends past the point of the cone, into the sem- 

 blance of a tail. Mr. Lambert, the authority for the 

 above, further tells us, (( that there are one or two 

 characteristic native traditions at Tonga Tabu (Figi 

 Islands), relative to the peculiar hostility of the 

 Octopus tribe to the rat tribe. Formerly they were 

 warm friends, but a rat on a volcanic island, which w 

 suddenly found to be sinking below the surface of the 

 water, having called on an Octopus to carry him on his 



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