60 HAMITS OK Till: c'Kl'll Al.ol'ODA. 



do not bother themselves with spreading their nets lor them; 

 they catch a female, when the others immediately I'M 11 upon her. 

 irrasp mid enlace their :inns. This ellbrlof their love censes not 

 till the Ushers have raised them into their boat : even then they 

 remain united." A somewhat similar account is found in 

 Yerany's work on the (Yphalopods of the Mediterranean, where 

 it is possibly deriveil from the verses of Oppian. 



The deposition o!' tile e^ii's ocelli's some days after I'ecnndat ion. 

 1 have been M witness to i he deposition of Jirccor four e^s. IMI! 

 1 was not alle to distinguish the method of the operation. A 

 female laid about one hundred e^n's. about lifly in a eornerof'the 

 aquarium, and fifty on the opposite side. These cr<rs were 

 enrolled ly their peduncles around the lon<- leaves of /o*l<>nt 

 marina. The larger part of the e^-s were laid in the niu'lit. for 

 I remarked them in the morning for the first time: they were 

 already black. 



When the Sepia is laying, she embraces the leaf of Xo- 

 with her tentacles, and a lew instants afterwards the ei\u - is 

 attached. The female removed herself but little from her 

 but she appeared to me to be sick, exhausted ; she died three 

 davs after having commenced oviposition. and only a few hours 

 after having attached her last eo-o- s . I do not know wheiher the 

 death of the animal is attributable to parturition; bu; on ;his 

 hypothesis I cannot hel| thinking of Oppian's recital of the death 

 of the I'oulpe: "The fatal marriajiv of the I'oulpe and its cruel 

 death rapidly succeed each other. No sooner does he qiiil the 

 female, than he falls exhausted on the sands. The female dies 

 also from t he pa in of t he laborious efforts of parturition." A ris- 

 totle also -ays: "The Sepia lays her eir^'s near the earth. amoni>- 

 the a lira-. She' only lays them a; several ellbrts. as though the 

 operation is painful to her." 



I opened the female which died dnrin<r parturition, and found 

 the ovary filled with a considerable quantity of CL^ in all stages 

 of development ; the most advanced were alrealv furnished with 

 a white and opatjne covi-riiiii'. but none of them were black like 

 tho>e attached to the /os'.era^. The black color. ;hen. is 

 acipiiretl at the moment of deposition, and it i> probably due to 

 -.-cretion of the ii'lands which surround the oviduct. The 

 coloration of the C^'_L^ has not ex-aped the observation of 



