Squid Mysteries 141 



devoured by a sperm whale, whose length could not 

 have been much less than sixty feet, exclusive of the 

 tentacles, and whose girth would be about fifteen or 

 twenty feet. The devouring capacity of such a 

 creature must be of fabulous dimensions, since, as 

 before noted, while all the sea-folk have amazing 

 digestive powers, the Cephalopoda are pre-eminent 

 in this direction. Their bodies may roughly be de- 

 scribed as bags of digestive juices which dissolve the 

 food as it comes in, and like the parabolic daughters 

 of the horse-leech, the cephalopod's stomach, that is 

 to say, almost his whole body, is ever crying ' Give, 

 give,' and never says ' Hold, enough.' 



Since evjn this vast mollusc's very existence has 

 been strenuously denied up till quite recent years by 

 scientific naturalists, it follows that we have but few 

 details concerning him. Some things, however, we 

 may know by inference, and amongst them are the 

 following. The gigantic Cuttle-fish must be very 

 prolific. He is the principal food, the main support 

 of the sperm whale, and as this vast mammal's numbers 

 are incalculable, and each individual needs, at the 

 very lowest computation, a ton of food per day to keep 

 him going, the numbers of the mollusca upon which he 

 feeds must be proportionate. As to the numbers of 

 the sperm whale I may say, in passing, that it has 

 several times been my lot to witness an assemblage of 

 cachalots, all of the largest size, covering an area of 

 ocean as far as the eye could reach from the masthead 

 of our ship in every direction. That is to say, we were 

 the centre of a circle of vision thirty miles in diameter, 

 and wherever the eye rested in that circle it saw sperm 

 whales spouting. Only to think of the amount of food 

 required for that stupendous host makes the mind 

 reel. 



