CEPHALOPODS. 



459 



French) is taken from their resemblance to certain species of ink- 

 holders. Oppian, who endowed the argonaut with wings, believed that 

 the calmar also could take to the air, in order to avoid his enemies. 

 Nevertheless, he was much puzzled how to give the form and 

 functions of a bird to a fish. Themistocles, by way of insult to the 

 Eretrians, likened them to calmars, saying they had swords and no 

 hearts. Athenaeus, a Greek physician before Galen, dwelt upon the 

 nourishing properties of the flesh of the calmar. 



Common enough in temperate regions, the calmars abound in the 

 seas of the Torrid zone : they are gregarious, and live in numerous 

 shoals, their bands taking every year the same direction, their emi- 

 gration proceeding from temperate to warm regions nearly the same 

 course as that followed by the herrings and pilchards. 



The calmars, like the cuttles, propel themselves backwards through 

 the water with great velocity, driving back the water by means of 

 their locomotive tube, moving with such vigour and promptitude that 

 they have been known to throw themselves out of the water, falling 

 on the shore or on the deck of a vessel. They only appear momen- 

 tarily on the shore, and only sojourn there to deposit their eggs, 

 which are gelatinous in substance, about the level of the lowest tides. 

 The body in the calmars is longer than in the cuttle-fish, cylindrical 



Fig. 319. Loligo vulgarls, with its 

 pen, or internal bone (I^amarck). 



Fig. 320. Loligo Gahi 

 (D'Orbigny). 



in shape, and terminating in a point, having two lateral fins, which 

 occupy the lower half or third of its body. 



In the common calmar, Loligo vulgar is (Fig. 319), and the Loligo 



