THE CUTTLE. FISH. 147 



upon the bed of the sea. At these times it makes use of its eight feelers, and creeps 

 along in the fashion of a species of swift-moving caterpillar. 



" It has no blood, no bones, no flesh. It is soft and flabby : a skin with nothing 

 inside. Its eight tentacles may be turned inside out, like the fingers of a glove. It 

 has a single orifice in the centre of its radii, which appears at first to be neither the 

 vent nor the mouth. It is, in fact, both one and the other. The orifice performs 

 a double function. The entire creature is cold. 



" The jelly-fish of the Mediterranean is repulsive. Contact with that animated 

 .gelatinous substance which envelops the bather, in which the hands sink, and the nails 

 scratch ineffectively, which can be torn without killing it, and which can be plucked off 

 without entirely removing it that fiuid and yet tenacious creature which slips through 

 ihe fingers, is disgusting ; but no horror can equal the sudden apparition of the devil- 

 fish, that Medusa with its eight serpents." 



Let us examine the creatures scientifically. 



The bodies of these formidable animals are soft and fleshy, while the head protrudes; 

 it is gifted with the usual organs of sense, the eyes being particularly prominent. 

 "" Not to oppress the reader with anatomical details," says Figuier, " we shall just remark 

 that the gaze of the cuttle-fish is decided and threatening. Its projecting eyes and 

 golden-coloured iris are said to have something fascinating in them." The mouth is 

 armed with a pair of horny mandibles or beaks, not unlike those of a parrot, and is 

 surrounded by a number of fleshy tentacles, provided, in most species, with numerous 

 suckers, and even claws. The arms or tentacles serve for all purposes locomotion, 

 swimming, offence, and defence. The suckers occupy all the internal surface of the 

 eight tentacular arms, and each arm carries about 240 of them. " The cuttle-fish," 

 .says the writer last quoted, " would be at no loss to reply to the question of the Don 

 Diego of Corneille 



"'Rodrique, us-tu du occur?' 



for they have three hearts." After that it need not be stated that they possess 

 respiratory organs and a blood circulation. Man and woman can bli/sh and change 

 colour ; so can the cuttle-fish ; but it turns darker instead of paler, and its emotion has 

 .another effect numerous little warts suddenly appear on its surface. 



In spite of the exaggerations of some writers, the size of many of these animals 

 is very large, as has been attested by trustworthy authorities. Mr. Beale,* engaged in 

 searching for shells on the rocks of Bonin Island, was seized by one which measured 

 across its expanded arms four feet, the body not being larger than a clenched hand. 

 He describes its cold, slimy grasp as sickening. His tormentor was killed by a cut 

 from a large knife, but its arms had to be released bit by bit. In the museum of 

 Montpellier there is one six feet long. Peron, a French naturalist, saw in the Australian 

 :seas one eight feet long. The travellers Quoy and Gaimard picked up in the Atlantic 

 Ocean the skeleton of an enormous mollusc, which, according to their calculations, must 

 have weighed 200 Ibs. In the Colleg-e of Surg-eons a beak or mandible of a cuttle- 



o . o o 



* Vide " The Natural History and Fishery of the Sperm Whale." 



