76 NATURAL HISTORY, 



body and head; and from 30 to 40 feet or more in the long 

 tentacles." That is to say, this amiable creature is as big as a small 

 boat, and has a spread of yard-arm that would do credit to a good- 

 sized ship. 



It was lucky for Victor Hugo's hero " Gilliatt " that he only fell 

 in with a " pieavre," and not with an arehitenthis, the more so as 

 most of these large squids are pretty well provided with sharp 

 Jiooked claws. 



Some fossil Cephalopods were as long as a man (or more) in the 

 body, but these were probably Tetrabranchiate ; and (so far as we 

 have any means of guessing) inferior in activity and in length of 

 arm. 



On the other side of the question, men certainly eat most sorts of 

 squids, cuttles, and octopods ; and I can myself vouch for some of 

 them being fairly good eating. The ink should be got rid of before 

 cooking. I remember once getting, in Italy, a dish of small 

 octopods, which would have been very good, if at every stroke of 

 the fork the ink had not spurted out, till the whole mess looked as 

 if the sauce had been made of blacking. 



Pretty nearly every sea fish eats every cephalopod he can catch ; 

 and gulls sometimes capture squids on the surface. The Marathas 

 call cuttles " Makuli,'* squids " Sit-Makuli, " and octopods 

 « Au-Makuli." 



The Konkan coast, with its basaltic reefs and muddy water, is not 

 so rich in shells as might be expected of a tropic shore, and the best 

 that I can do here is simply to indicate those that I have observed, 

 following Woodward's classification as closely as possible. 



Every beach seems to vary ; and there are many Konkan shells in 

 our Museum that I have not collected here >, but, writing in the 

 jungles, I cannot refer to the catalogue.* We have few native 

 Strombidge, the chief is Roatellaria curia. 



My next shell is a Murex, closely resembling the English M. 

 erinaceus; and called by children " Aswalia" or "Bear-shell." 

 These children's names are rather useful, as grown up natives here- 

 abouts have but few names for shells. A big univalve is Kuba, and 

 a little one Kubi ; and bivalves in general are " Shipi/' or some 



* For instance, the pretty blushing Hemristoma seems to be abundant just north 

 of Bombay ; and is often brought into the city in road material, but I have nerejf 

 got it in, or south of the harbour. 



