CEPHALOPODA 321 



resemblance of a parrot's bill (Fig. 60, b), and are well 

 adapted to tear their prey piece-meal, or crush the hard 

 shell, especially when, as in the Nautili, their tips are 

 hardened and calcareous. * Between the jaws lies the 

 tongue, adherent to the platform of the mouth, but capable 

 of being unrolled to a slight extent, and having- its surface 

 roughened with many rows of small sharply -pointed tricuspi- 

 date, or semi-tricuspidate teeth, set in close and regular array, 

 which can be erected at will, so as in some measure to grate 

 down the food, previously to its transmission to the gizzard, 

 and thev greatly facilitate its descent bv their direction, 

 and by their motion backwards and forwards. In the mouth, 

 the food is mixed with the saliva, which is secreted by one 

 or two pairs of large glands, f The gullet is a narrow mem- 

 branous tube, of nearly uniform calibre throughout in the 

 Loligo Figs. 61, 62, a), and penetrating the substance of 

 the liver before it enters the stomach : but, in the Octopus, 

 the gullet is only bound to the surface of the liver, and at 

 the point of attachment swells out into a large membranous 

 crop, of the appearance of which, in the Octopus ventricosus 

 at least, I cannot give you a better idea than by comparing 

 it, both in size and position, to the bulb of a small retort. 

 The stomach (Figs. 61, 62, b) is a thick muscular organ, 

 like the gizzard of a fowl, and strongly corrugated inter- 

 nally in a longitudinal direction : immediately beyond it, in 

 the Sepia and Octopodise, and also in certain Teuthida?. is 

 situated a curious spiral appendage, or rudimental pancreas, 

 laminated on the interior, into which the bile is poured ; 

 but in the Loligo vulgaris, instead of this spiral coecum, 

 and, as it were, to compensate for its deficiency of a 

 crop, there is a very large membranous and somewhat cy- 

 lindrical bag (Fig. 61, 62, c), on the posterior and upper 

 part of which we trace vestiges of the spiral structure, 

 for there a fatty substance is so disposed as to assume 

 that form, having the outer edges cut in a deeply serrated 

 manner (Fig. 61, 62, d . I have found this bag always filled 

 with a grumous fluid, and it is undoubtedly the organ in 

 which digestion is completed ; for it not only receives the 

 bile, but is itself, or the spiral part of it, supposed to furnish 

 a secretion analogous to that of the pancreas in higher ani- 

 mals. The aperture between the gizzard and this coecum is 

 oblicpie and valvular, and another adjoining aperture leads 



* Owen, Mem. on the P. Nautilus, p. 21. 



t In Nautilus, these glands are wanting, hut the tongue is more 

 completely developed than in the other Cephalopods. — Owen, lib. at. 

 p. 23. 



