80 
MARINE MAMMALS OF THE NORTH-WESTERN COAST. 
it is instantly crushed, and a portion or all is swallowed. This hypothesis of the 
mode in which the animal feeds may be correct. As to the nature of its food 
there is no cpuestion, for it is well known that the ceplialopods are its main 
dependence ; yet occasionally the codfish, albicore, and bouito, are laid under con- 
tribution.* But the true and natural way in which this great rover of the hidden 
♦Relative to the food of the Sperm "Whale, 
we quote the following from Beale'a interesting 
account of the Sepia octopus: 
NATUKE OF THE SPERM WHALE'S FOOD. 
The Sepia octopus, or "sea squid," as it is 
termed by whalers, sometimes reaches an enor- 
mous size. Mr. Henry Baker, F. R. S., in the 
Philosophical Transactions for 1758, p. 777, after 
having given an interesting description of a 
specimen, sent to him for examination by the 
Earl of Macclesfield, states that it can, by spread- 
ing its arms abroad like a net, so fetter and 
entangle the prey they inclose, when they are 
drawn together, as to render it incapable of ex- 
erting its strength ; for, however feeble these 
branches or arms may be singly, their power 
united becomes surprising ; and we are assured 
— Nature is so kind to these animals — that if in 
their struggles any of their arms are broken off, 
after some time they will grow again, of which 
a specimen at the British Museum is an un- 
doubted proof, for a little new arm is there seen 
sprouting forth in the room of a large one which 
had been lost. "It is evident," he continues, 
"from what has been said, that the sea polypus, 
or octopus, must be terrible to the inhabitants 
of the waters, in proportion to its size (Pliny 
mentions one, whose arms were thirty feet in 
length), for the close embraces of its arms and 
adhesion of its suckers must render the efforts of 
its prey ineffectual, either for escape or resist- 
ance, unless it be endowed with an extraordi- 
ary degree of strength." Of the smaller genera 
of these animals, the reader will find some in- 
teresting details, by referring to the appendix to 
Tuckey's Voyage to the Congo, vol. iii. There is 
also an account of a newly discovered cepha- 
lopod, in the appendix to Sir J. Ross' Voyage to 
the Antarctic Regions. A gigantic cephalopod was 
discovered by Drs. Bank and Solander, in Capt. 
Cook's first voyage, floating dead upon the sea, 
surrounded by birds, who were feeding on its 
remains. From the parts of this specimen which 
are still preserved in the Hunterian Collection, 
and which have always strongly excited the at- 
tention of naturalists, it must have measured at 
least six feet from the end of the tail to the 
end of the tentacles. But this last we must 
imagine a mere pigmy, when we consider the 
enormous dimensions of the one spoken of by 
Dr. Schewediawer, in the Philosophical Transac- 
tions, vol. lxxiii, p. 226, whose tentaculum, or 
limb, measured twenty -seven feet in length; but 
let the doctor speak for himself. "One of the 
gentlemen," says he, "who was so kind as to 
communicate to me his observations on this sub- 
ject (ambergris), also, ten years ago, hooked a 
Spermaceti "Whale that had in its mouth a ten- 
taculum of the Sepia octopoda nearly twenty- 
seven feet long ! This did not appear its whole 
length, for one end was corroded by digestion, 
so that in its natural state it may have been a 
great deal longer. "When we consider," says the 
Doctor, "the enormous bulk of the tentaculum 
here spoken of, we shall cease to wonder at the 
common saying of the fishermen, that the cut- 
tle-fish is the largest fish of the ocean." In 
Todd's Cyclopcedia of Anatomy, p. 529, treating 
of Cephalopoda, in an admirable paper by Mr. 
Owen, it states, that "the natives of the Poly- 
nesian Islands, who dive for shell -fish, have a 
well-founded dread and abhorrence of these 
formidable cephalopods, and one can not feel 
surprised that their fears should have perhaps 
exaggerated their dimensions and destructive at- 
tributes.'' The same learned writer, after having 
beautifully described another animal of the same 
order, obsei*ves : "Let the reader picture to him- 
self the projecting margin of the horny hook de- 
veloped into a long- curved, sharp-pointed claw, 
and these weapons clustered at the expanded 
terminations of the tentacles and arranged in a 
double alternate series, along the whole internal 
surface of the eight muscular feet, and he will 
have some idea of the formidable nature of the 
