166 NATURAL HISTORY. 



chroniatophores that the Cephalopoda owe the peculiar play of "shot" colours, which pass like 

 blushes over their surface in the living state. These blushes of colour are especially well displayed 

 by young Cephalopoda just freed from the egg. (Huxley.)* 



The Common Squid (Loligo vulgaris) is met with in shoals around the Cornish coast, and is 

 taken by the fishermen at night by torchlight in large numbers for bait. Its body is cylindrical, 

 tapering behind and much elongated in the males ; the tins are terminal and united at the base of the 

 body forming a rhomb. The mantle is supported by two ridges in front, and there is a dorsal groove 

 fitting the ridge and grooves on the neck of the funnel. The eyes are large and covered by the skin. 

 The feet are of unequal length, the dorsal ones being the shortest ; they are armed with two rows of 

 suckers, furnished with horny dentated margins. The tentacles are partly retractile, with lanceo- 

 late club-like extremities bearing four rows of cupping-suckers. These animals are called by the 

 fishermen "pen and ink fish," from the readiness with which they discharge their ink-bag when 

 alarmed or in danger of being captured, and also from the fact of the delicate internal shell (or 

 gladius) of the Calamary (Loligo vulgaris) being in shape extremely like a quill-pen, with an ex- 

 pansion on each side to correspond with the vane of the feather. These delicate pens are multiplied 

 by age, several being found packed closely one behind another in old individuals. (Owen.) The 

 Calamaries are all good swimmers, and gregarious in their habits ; they can also crawl head-down- 

 wards on their oral disc, or mouth, with the feet expanded. The species of Loligo, about nineteen 

 in number, are cosmopolitan in distribution, being found throughout the seas of the globe, living both 

 in the open sea and along the coasts. 



The spawn of the Squid (Loligo vulgaris) consists of dozens of semi-transparent, gelatinous, 

 slender, cylindrical sheaths, about four or five inches long, each containing many ova embedded in it, 

 and all springing from one common centre, and resembling a mop without a handle. Johann Bodasch, 

 Professor of Natural History at Prague, calculated that one of these mop-like masses contained 39,7(56 

 ova; and by counting those embedded in ten of the long, gelatinous, finger-like processes, and weighing 

 them and the remainder, Mr. Henry Lee verified his estimate, and computed that in one specimen 

 there were 42,000 perfect young Squids. It is evident that comparatively few of them live to arrive 

 at maturity, or the sea would teem with them; and in every existing aquarium it has been found 

 impossible to rear the young Cephalopods hatched there. These " sea-mops " are not found attached 

 to anything, and the pelagic habits of the Calamaries render it probable that they are left floating 

 on the surface of the ocean. 



" The movements of the Little Squid " (Loligo media), says Mr. Henry Lee, ' are very graceful 

 and pleasing. They are gregarious, like other Squids, and keep close together. By the action of their 

 tail fins they can either 'go a-head' or 'turn astern,' and it is very interesting to watch their 

 mano3uvres. We once had in one of the tanks four of these little Squids (which were only four 

 inches long), and I was much amused by seeing them perform, in a most ludicrous manner, the 

 quadrille figure called La Trenise. Three of them ranged themselves side by side, and advanced 

 towards, and retired from, a solitary one, who, for some reason, was not received into their rank, but 

 faced them. When they withdrew, stem first, to the back of the tank, the lonely one followed them 

 up with a pas seul. But there the similitude ended. He was repeatedly driven backwards to his former 

 position, and was not allowed the privilege of taking his partner with him. 



" These little Squids," he adds, " are impudently voracious. I have seen one in single combat 

 with a young Dog-fish about four inches long. At first I thought the fish was the aggressor, and had 

 seized one of the tentacular arms of the little Loligo as a good substitute for a worm; but it was soon 

 apparent that the affray had been provoked by the carnivorous Cephalopod, and that the puppy-fish 

 would get the worst of it ; so they were separated." 



In the Dibranchiata (Squids, Cuttles, Octopus, &c. ), the three principal pairs of nerve-masses, or ganglia, are 

 usually large, and so closely aggregated together, that they are not readily distinguishable. The optic nerves are very 

 large ; one or two nerves are given off to the ganglion of the throat and mouth, which are united to form one mass encircling 

 the gullet. The pedal, or foot-ganglion, lies on the posterior side of the gullet, and supplies the large nerves to the arms 

 (feet) or tentacles, and those to the funnel, while the auditory nerves are immediately connected with them. The other nerve- 

 centres (called parieto-splarwhnic) give off branches to the mantle, the shell-muscles, the branchia, the heart, and other 

 internal organs ; the inferior buccal ganglion sends nerves along the oesophagus, which end in a ganglion on the stomach. 

 (Hancock, Anatomy of the Ommastrepkes.) 



