362 DICECIOUS MOLLUSCA. 



and the ova, notwithstanding all the tales of the earlier natu- 

 ralists to the contrary, are not made prolific until after their 

 expulsion from the female. In their passage from the ovary 

 they receive a coating of a gelatinous fluid secreted by a 

 peculiar gland, and insoluble in water, but which swells out 

 greatly after the deposition of the eggs. These are always 

 clustered, and the pattern of the cluster varies in the differ- 

 ent families : in the Sepia it resembles very exactly a bunch 

 of black grapes, both as to size and colour ;* in the Octopus 

 they are irregularly heaped in bunches attached to algae ; 

 and in the Loligo, or Calamary, they are imbedded in a 

 regular series of cells in a pudding-like gelatinous intestine, 

 from eight to twelve inches in length, many of them being 

 united together by a ligament in a common centre, so that 

 the cluster, when mature and entire, may be compared to a 

 woollen mop. At first the contents of the egg are colour- 

 less and fluid, and apparently homogeneous ; but shortly 

 after their impregnation, a speck becomes visible in the 

 centre, and the young foetus, drawing nourishment from the 

 yolk through its slender cord, grows apace, and has assumed 

 a recognisable form before the yolk is consumed, and before 

 it is ready to burst through the thin membranes which con- 

 tain and protect it.f It is probable that the female brings 

 forth once only during the year, but the number of eggs 

 laid is very considerable. Bohadtch has calculated that 

 from a cluster of the common Loligo, of the average size, 

 there are not fewer than 39,760 young ones produced. J 

 The males, if we are to credit ancient story, are " very 

 constant husbands, accompanying their females everywhere ;" 

 and they have their attentive care very ill requited. " The 

 males of the cuttles kind," says Pliny, " are spotted with 

 sundry colors more dark and blackish, yea, and more firme 

 and steady than the female. If the female be smitten with 

 a trout-speare, or such like three-forked weapon, they wil 

 come to aid and succor her : but she again is not so kind 

 to them, for if the male be stricken she will not stand to it, 

 but runs away." 



* Boys in Lin. Trans, v. 231. There is a figure of a cluster in Rondelet 

 Hist, des Poissons, i. 368. 



t Dr. Coldstream has given a minute description of the eggs of Sepia 

 officinalis in Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond. i. 86, an. 1833. See also Cuvier in 

 Ann. des Sc. Nat. xxvi. 69. 



! De Anim. Marin. 161. Tab. xii. of this work contains a tolerably good 

 figure of the clustered ovigerous mass. See another in Cyclop. Anat. and 

 Physiology, i. 559. fig. 241. 



