Musk and Marriage 143 



quality to that strange substance, ambergris, which 

 is secreted by the sperm whale alone. It always 

 srnells faintly of musk and always has Cuttle-fish 

 beaks imbedded in its substance. But its properties, 

 apart from those fantastic attributes which Arabian 

 superstition has attached to it, are not those of a 

 perfume, but of a power that accentuates, heightens 

 the quality and pungency of any distillation of perfume 

 to which it is added. Surely a strange product of 

 such a weird monster brooding in the depths of the 

 sea. 



These few facts almost exhaust what we know of 

 the gigantic Cuttle-fish. It is credited with other 

 qualities, which we need not place too much faith in, 

 namely, that it can introduce one of its tentacles into 

 its stomach and withdraw from thence any substance 

 which is causing it uneasiness ; that it can, if bereft 

 of a limb, set to work at once and reproduce the lost 

 member ; and that when food runs short below it 

 can come to the surface, and finding a becalmed ship, 

 lay her aboard and collect from her cabin, forecastle, 

 and rigging, every member of the crew. Strange 

 enough in all conscience, but no stranger, surely, than 

 the fact I reserve for the last. The gigantic Cuttle- 

 fish has no mate, at least none that he ever knows. 

 But at certain seasons he grows an additional tentacle, 

 a curious, dwarfed, club-headed thing, which looks 

 strangely out of place among the ten ordinary ones. In 

 due time this extra tentacle matures. It then detaches 

 itself from the crown of its source and floats away. 

 In due time it finds the predestined spouse, to which 

 it immediately attaches itself. And in this extra- 

 ordinary fashion is the gigantic Cuttle-fish reproduced 

 — surely the strangest in all natural history and only 

 comparable to the grafting of fruit-trees. But the 



