310 FUNCTIONS AND INSTINCTS. 



it, the first thing that would strike him, would 

 be the means by which it progressed upon the 

 bed of the sea, he would see no motion produced 

 by the action of tentacular legs furnished with 

 suckers, like those of the cuttle-fish, but instead 

 of it, by a single expansive organ, exhibiting 

 considerable resemblance to the foot of a snail. 

 This organ, Mr. Owen, led by the nervous 

 system, regards as surmounting the head and 

 as its principal instrument for locomotion. The 

 oral organs of this animal are much more nume- 

 rous and complicated than those of the cuttle- 

 fish, and are furnished with no suckers. Its 

 tentacles are retractile within four processes, 

 each pierced by twelve canals protruding an 

 equal number of these organs, so that in all 

 there are forty-eight. In fact, the whole oral 

 apparatus, for the full description of which I 

 must refer the reader to Mr. Owen's excellent 

 tract, except the mandibles and the lip, is 

 formed upon a plan different from that of the 

 cuttle-fish, as likewise from that of the carnivo- 

 rous trachelipod Molluscans, arid indicates very 

 different modes of entrapping and catching 

 their prey. 



The eye, also, Mr. Owen states to be reduced 

 to the simplest condition that the organ of vision 

 can assume, without departing altogether from 

 the type of the higher classes, so that it seems 

 not far removed from that of the proper Mol- 



