74 NATURAL HISTORY. 



The animal has an ink-bag, eight arms and only two gills. The 

 female only has a shell ; and this, looked upon as a shell, is a fraud ; 

 being really no shell at all, but a sort of nest that she makes to hold 

 her eggs in. It is true that she begins early ; young female 

 Argonauts themselves leave the egg with the beginning of a shell 

 about them ; much as the human female nurses a doll before she gets 

 out of the nursery herself. 



The male has no shell at all ; and is a common looking little 

 " octopus, " not a quarter the size of the female. 



I got one "shell" of the "Paper Nautilus" at Alibag, which bad 

 been taken in a drift net with the animal in it; but the latter had 

 "dropped out" according to the captor. This was probably true; 

 there is no muscular connection between the animal and shell 

 (as there is in all true shells) ; and there was no more reason why 

 the Argonaut should not leave the shell in the fisherman's hands, 

 and do very well without (until, as she probably would, she had 

 secreted a new one) than there is against a hen bird's leaving her 

 nest. This shell is in our Museum. 



The rest of the eight-armed cuttle-fishes, ugly creatures, live, on 

 this coast, mostly about the reefs. Out of water they can only 

 crawl ; but when the weight of the blob-like body is taken off the 

 arms by the water, they pass over the bottom with what can best 

 be described as a rapid striding motion of arm after arm, or drive 

 themselves stern foremost by spurting water out of their " funnel/' 

 at the same time closing the arms together, and letting* them stream 

 behind, so that the whole creature looks like some sort of tadpole, 

 or big-headed vertebrate fish, .and not a bit like one's idea of a 

 " cuttle-fish." 



Some of them have a sort of membranous fins (but I have not 

 got any of these here), aud all have an internal rudimentary shell, 

 usually in two pieces, very small and rather hard to find. 



The next group is that of the Decapod cuttle-fishes and squills, 

 all of which, besides the eight arms allowed to the Octopods, have 

 two "tentacles" considerably exceeding the arms. Of these we have 

 several species of Sepia and Loligo. 



The Sepia, or true cuttle-fish, lives chiefly near the shore, but in 

 pretty deep water. I never saw one caught between tide-marks 

 here. He comes, too, much more off the bottom than the Octopus ; 

 and can swim head foremost upon occasion, by means of fins 

 extending along the whole of each aide, though he prefers travel- 



