304 THE OCEAN. 



like beautiful carpets or mats of wide expanse. 

 When opened beneath the water, under the beams 

 of the sun, they display a series of squares with 

 elevated margins, the interior being of a bright 

 green, the exterior of a fawn colour. These, also, 

 contract instantly on the slightest touch ; and thus 

 entire fields of them, being connected together by 

 a common fleshy disk upon the rock, are changed 

 in a moment, as if by magic, from brilliant green 

 to dull brown, which again, as they recover from 

 their alarm, is soon replaced by the verdant hue. 



Numerous species of Squid and Cuttle are ob- 

 serv'ed in the Pacific, several of which have the 

 power of making long leaps out of the water, even 

 to the same height and distance as the Flying-fish, 

 wlience these kinds are denominated by seamen, 

 Flying Squid. One of these, which appears to have 

 been an OnyclioteutMs, is described by Mr. F. D, 

 Bennett, as having fallen, in one of its leaps, upon 

 the deck of the ship in which he was sailing. The 

 whole class to which these animals belong is re- 

 markable for the powerful apparatus with which the 

 animals are endowed for seizing prey, in the numer- 

 ous long and flexible arms, furnished with cuplike 

 suckers, which forcibly adhere to any object at the 

 will of the creature. But the genus just mentioned 

 is favoured above its fellows ; for, in addition to the 

 usual structure, there is placed in each sucker-cup of 

 the long feet a sharp projecting hook. On the 

 smooth and glossy scales of fishes lubricated with 

 slime, it might not be always easy at once to create 

 a vacuum ; but these hooks are plunged by the 



