WABITS OF THE CEPHALOPODS. 277 
the islands of the Indian Archipelago, Mr. Adams frequently 
observed the Sepiz and Octopi in full predatory activity, and 
had considerable difficulty and trouble in securing them, so 
great was their restless vivacity, and so vigorous their endeavours 
to escape. ‘“* They dart from side to side of the pools,” says the 
naturalist in his entertaining and instructive account of his 
journey to those distant gems of the tropical sea, “ or fix them- 
selves so tenaciously to the surface of the stones by means of 
their suckers that it requires great force and strength to detach 
them. Even when removed and thrown upon the sand, they 
progress rapidly, in a sidelong shuffling manner, throwing about 
their long arms, ejecting their ink-like fluid in sudden violent 
jets, and staring about with their big shining eyes (which at 
night appear luminous, like a cat’s) in a very grotesque and 
hideous manner.” 
At the Cape de Verd islands, Mr. C. Darwin was also much 
amused by the various arts to escape detection used by a 
cuttle-fish, which seemed fully aware that he was watching it. 
Remaining for a time motionless, it would then stealthily 
advance an inch or two, like a cat after a mouse, and thus 
proceeded, till, having gained a deeper part, it darted away, 
leaving a dusky train of ink, to hide the hole into which it had 
crawled. 
All the cephalopods are extremely voracious; they destroy on 
shallow banks the hopes of the fishermen, devour along the 
coasts and on the high seas countless myriads of young fish and 
naked molluscs, and kill, like the tiger, for the mere love of 
carnage. Thus they would become dangerous to the equili- 
brium of the seas if nature, to counterbalance their destructive 
habits, had not provided a great number of enemies for the 
thinning of their ranks. 
They form the almost exclusive food of the sperm-whales, 
and the albatross and the petrels love to skim them from the 
surface of the ocean. Tunnies and bonitos devour them in vast 
numbers, the cod consumes whole shoals of squids, and man, as 
I have already mentioned, catches many millions to serve him 
as a bait for this valuable fish. 
At Teneriffe, in the Brazils, in Peru and Chili, in India and 
China, various species of cephalopods are used as food. Along 
the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, the common sepia 
si 
