114 



NATURAL HISTORY. 



little cups; sometimes sessile, sometimes elevated on peduncles, but vary- 

 in- in size according to the species and the position on the arm. Each cup 

 has a fleshy rim, just inside which there is frequently a horny ring of 

 hooks. In the centre is a movable piece controlled by appropriate muscles, 

 ,iii(l acting like the piston of a pump. The cuttle fastens its suckers on 

 some <>l>ject, the fleshy rim fitting close, and the horny hooks increasing 

 the hold, and then the piston is drawn out, creating a vacuum, — the whole 

 forming a prehensile apparatus of the most perfect description. The writer- 

 has frequently allowed one of the smaller squids to seize his fingers with 

 tin- apparatus, and the feeling produced can be described by no other word 

 than uncanny. It feels cold and disagreeable, sticky, shagreeny, and 

 arouses sensations which cannot be put in words. 



Squids and cuttles have other means of defence than these suckers and 

 tin' pa not-like jaws which we must pass without further mention. This 

 defence is furnished by means of the ink, so familiar to all as the pigment 

 sepia. Close to the intestine is a gland which secretes a black or brown 

 pigment in large quantities. When danger approaches, the animal expels 

 the contents of this gland into the water, thus creating a dense cloud 

 under cover of which it escapes. This pigment is almost indestructible, 

 and fossil squids are found in which the ink-bag is perfectly preserved, 

 and the contents of which only need mixing with water to be used by the 

 artist. Indeed, the story is often told that Buckland, the English geolo- 

 gist, drew the picture of one of the fossil squids occurring at Lyme Regis, 



England, with ink taken from 

 its own body. 



One of the most beautiful 

 shells in the cabinets of collec- 

 tors is that of the Argonaut a, or 

 paper-sailor, of which a figure 

 is inserted here ; but our cut 

 fails to do justice to its peculiar 

 delicacy, — no engraver could 

 do that. It is almost as thin 

 as paper, white in color, shad- 

 ing off into points and spots 

 of a rich brown. This shell, 

 however, is not to be regarded 

 P^ of the animal, like all those which have gone before; it is in 

 aiitv but a nest for the eggs. Among the Acephals and Gasteropoda the 

 »ody is connected to the shell by muscles, but here there is nothing of 

 The female merely sits in the cavity during the breeding season.. 



I i,;. Kis._ Shell of the paper nautilus (Aryonauta arrjo), 

 reduced. 



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