448 THE OCEAN WORLD. 



to cabinets of curiosities and the shops of dealers in articles of 

 virtu. 



Owen's second order, Dibranchiata, contains six families ; the 

 first is Spirulidse, containing the curious Spirula, that little gem 

 amongst oceanic shells. The second .family is Sepmdte, containing 

 Belemnosis and Sepia. The third is BelemnitidsB ; the fourth, Teu- 

 tliidffi ; the fifth, Qciopodidss ; and the sixth, Argonautidde. 



ACETABULIFEROUS CEPHALOPODA. 



To this group belong the cuttle-fish, squids, and argonauts, among 

 existing species, and the Belemnites among the fossil species. Some 

 of these creatures are large, and essentially flesh-eaters, or carni- 

 vorous ; and, if we may believe all that has been written respecting 

 them, very formidable ones. Listen to Michelet, while he paints the 

 warlike humour of these inhabitants of the deep: "The Medusae 

 and Molluscs," says this popular author, "are generally innocent 

 creatures, and I have lived with them in a world of gentle peace. 

 Few flesh-eaters among them ; those even which are so, only kill to 

 satisfy their wants, living for the most part on life just commenced 

 on gelatinous animals, which can scarcely be called organic. From 

 this world grief was absent. No cruelty and no passion. Their 

 little souls, if mild, were not without their ray of aspiration towards 

 the light, and towards what comes to us from heaven, and towards 

 that love, revelling in that changing flame which at night is the 

 light of the deep. It is now, however, necessary to describe a much 

 graver world : a world of rapine and of murder ; from the very 

 beginning, from the first appearance of life, violent death appeared ; 

 sudden refinement, useful but cruel, purification, of all which has 

 languished, or which may linger or languish, of the slow and feeble 

 creation whose fecundity had encumbered the globe. 



"In the more ancient formations of the old world we find two 

 murderers a nipper and a sucker. The first is revealed to us by the 

 imprint of the trilobite, an order now lost, the most destructive of 

 extinct beings. The second subsists in one gigantic fragment, a beak 

 nearly two feet in length, which was that of a great sucker or cuttle- 

 fish (Sepia). If we may judge from such a beak, this monster, if the 

 other parts of the body are in proportion, must have been enormous ; 



