316 CARNIVOROUS MOLLUSCA. 



"When an animal of this kind approaches any body with its 

 suckers, in order to apply them more intimately, it presents 

 p. 60 them in a flat or plain state ; and 



when the suckers are thus fixed 

 by the harmony of surfaces, the ani- 

 mal contracts the sphincter, and 

 forms a cavity in the centre, which 

 becomes a vacuum. By this con- 

 trivance, the sucker adheres to the 

 surface with a force proportioned to 

 its area, and the weight of the column 

 of air and water, of which it con- 

 stitutes the base. This force, mul- 

 tiplied by the number of suckers, 

 gives that by which all or a part of 

 the feet adhere to any body. This 

 power of adhesion is such, that it 

 The jaws, and a portion of the is easier to tear off the feet than to 



f the f 0t ' f L se P arate them from tne substance to 

 which the animal chooses to attach 

 itself." * It must, then, be a fearful thing, for any living 

 creature, to come within their compass, or within their leap, 

 for captured by a sudden spring of several feet, made "with 

 the rapidity of lightning," and entangled in the slimy ser- 

 pentine grasp of eight or ten arms, and held by the pressure 

 of some hundreds of exhausted cups, escape is hopeless, and 

 the struggles of the hapless victim, by bringing its body 

 into more rapid contact with the suckers not yet applied, 

 only accelerate its fate. 



As a sort of illustration I may remind you of the follow- 

 ing fishing custom of the natives of the South Sea Islands : 

 " They have a curious contrivance for taking several kinds 

 of ray and cuttle-fish, which resort to the holes of the coral 

 rocks, and protrude their arms or feet for the bait, but re- 

 main themselves firm within the retreat. The instrument 

 employed consists of a straight piece of hard wood, a foot 

 long, round, and polished, and not half-an-inch in diameter. 

 Near one end of this, a number of the most beautiful pieces 

 of the cowrie or tiger-shell are fastened one over another, 

 like the scales of a fish or the plates of a piece of armour, 

 until it is about the size of a turkey's egg, and resembles the 

 cowrie. It is suspended in an horizontal position by a 

 strong line, and lowered by the fisherman from a small canoe, 



* Cuvier, Comp. Anat. Trans, i. 432. See also Roget, Bridgew. Treat, 

 i. 260. 



