THE SP1RULA. 



181 



in search of the Cuttle-fish, which, when seen lying beneath the waters in wait for its prey, they 

 dexterously spear, ere the creature has time to dart with the rapidity of an arrow from the weapon 

 about to transfix his soft but firm body. As in ancient times, these molluscs constitute now a 

 valuable part of the food of the poor, by whom they are chiefly used. We can ourselves bear 

 testimony to their excellence. When well beaten, to render the flesh tender, before being dressed, 

 and then cut up into morsels and served in a savoury brown stew, they make a dish by no means 

 to be despised, excellent both in substance and flavour. A modern Lycian dinner, in which 

 stewed Cuttle-fish formed the first, and roast Porcupine the second course, would scarcely fail to 

 be relished by an unprejudiced epicure in search of novelty." 



The bone of the Chinese species attains a length of nearly two feet. The Japanese are large 

 consumers of Cuttle-fish as an article of food. 



Upwards of thirty species of Cuttle-fishes have been described. Their distribution is world- wide. 

 Two are recorded as British : the Sepia officinalis and the more rare S. biserialis, of which only the 

 sepiostaire, or internal shell, has been obtained. 



FAMILY VI.-SPIRULID^. 



Since the publication of "The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Samarang" in 1848, 

 we have until recently learnt but little concerning the owner and constructor of the beautiful 

 pearly- white shell known as Spirula, whose many-chambered spiral tests (composed of separate 

 whorls, like a little post-horn) are scattered in thousands on the shores of New Zealand, 

 and a few of which are yearly wafted by the warm current of the Gulf Stream 

 to British and Irish shores, and have been picked up on the coast of Kerry, in 

 Ireland, at Tenby, in South Wales, and on the coast of Cornwall. 



The materials which Professor Owen had at his disposal when he prepared 

 his first account, in 1848. consisted of a headless specimen, brought home by 

 Admiral Sir Edward Belcher, with the hinder part of the mantle torn off'; part of 

 another specimen of Spirula, showing the mantle, with the shell attached, taken 

 off" Timor; and a very unique specimen of Spirula australis, in Mr. Cuming's 

 collection, " perfect in all its parts except the termination of one of its tentacles," 

 found in a fresh state by Mr. Percy Earl on the shore of Port Nicholson, New 

 Zealand. This last specimen Professor Owen was permitted to draw, but was not 

 then allowed to dissect, and it was not until 1878, after an interval of thirty years, 

 that he was enabled to complete his anatomy of this Cumingian rarity.* 



This singular little Squid differs in several important points from the other tf . 

 two-gilled and ten-armed division to which it belongs : in the absence of any well- 

 developed fins ; also the two lobes of the mantle seem to embrace the shell, all save 

 one tiny portion, which may at times have been slightly exposed by the con- 

 traction of the mantle-lobes, though this seems improbable. 



The base of the body, which in the Squids ends in a pointed, often arrow- 

 shaped, fin, in Spirula terminates in an elliptical convex substance with a central 

 depression (a;), in the midst of which is a pore terminating blindly. " If," says 

 Professor Owen, " the disc were applied to a flat surface and the central part were 

 withdrawn from the level, a vacuum would be produced, which would convert the 

 disc into a sucker. Should the Spirula so attach itself, as Rumphius describes ('the little 

 Post-horn' Spirula hangs to the rocks by a thin and small door, or disc, by which it sets itself fast to the 

 rocks) its tentacles and arms would be free to exercise their prehensile power on any passing object 

 of food. The formal analogy to the Polype, indicated by Aristotle's name for the ' Poulpe,' would 

 thus be carried farther in Spirula by its occasional repetition of the status of a hungry Actinia." 



This power of attaching itself by means of a terminal suctorial disc if we may rely on 



* See "Annals and Mag. Nat. Hist.," January, 1879 (Plates I. III.). 



t Explanation of woodcut of Spirula : A, dorsal wall of shell ; B, ventral wall of shell ; a, dorsal mandible of beak ; 

 t, ventral mandible of beak ; e, the eye ; /, the funnel or siphon ; d, ventral edge of mantle ; g, gill or branchia ; m, retractor 

 muscles uniting animal to shell ; r, chambers of shell laid bare, exposing s, the siphuncle ; x, the supposed sucker or disc for 

 adhering to foreign bodies by ; I b, the oral appendages, feet or poda ; t, one of the long tentacles. 



AUSTRALIS.f 



(After Owen.) 



