CEPHALOPODS. 449 



its ventose, invincible arms, of perhaps twenty or thirty feet, like 

 those of some monstrous spider. The sucker of the world, soft and 

 gelatinous ! it is himself. In making war on the molluscs he remains 

 mollusc also ; that is to say, always an embryo. He presents the 

 strange, almost ridiculous, if it was not also terrible, appearance of an 

 embryo going to war ; of a foetus furious and cruel, soft and trans- 

 parent, but tenacious, breathing with a murderous breath, for it is 

 not for food alone that it makes war : it has the wish to destroy. 

 Satiated, and even bursting, it still destroys. Without defensive 

 armour, under its threatening murmurs there is no peace ; its safety 

 is to attack. It regards all creatures as a possible enemy. It throws 

 about its long arms, or rather thongs, armed with suckers, at random." 

 Such is the somewhat exaggerated picture which the eloquent 

 historian and poet draws of the Molluscous Cephalopod, and it must 

 be admitted that there is a basis of truth in this, as well as in the 

 more recent one painted by Victor Hugo, in his eloquent book, " Les 

 Travailleurs de la Mer." Where, however, there is so much of the 

 fictitious floating about, it will be our endeavour to eliminate facts only. 



FAMILY OF THE SEPIAD^:. 



The body of the cuttle-fish (Sepia) is thus a very singular struc- 

 ture, somewhat reminding us of certain species of polyps. We find 

 a body or abdominal mass, hand ahead, separated by compression, 

 sufficiently marked. The body is covered by the mantle, which has 

 the form of a sac opened only in front by a transverse cleft. The 

 head has a projecting and well-developed eye on each side ; it is 

 surmounted by a sort of fleshy funnel, which is divided by four pairs 

 of tentacles. At the bottom of this tentacular funnel is the mouth ; 

 and from the anterior opening in the mantle a tube issues, which is 

 wide at its base. 



The Sepiadse have eight arms rising from the crown of the head 

 armed with four rows of suckers, two long slender tentacles with 

 broadly-expanding ends, and stalked suckers ; eyes moving in their 

 sockets, and body broadly ovate in Sepia. 



If we study the general aspect of the animal more closely, we find 

 that the tentacles which serve at once as organs of locomotion for 

 swimming, for creeping, and as prehensile organs for seizing and 



