CEPHALOPODA, 



299 



sented by these animals, while alive and free in their 

 native element ; changing their colours with the ra- 

 pidity of thought, they dart from place to place with 

 amazing activity ; some species, indeed, cleave the 

 water with such rapidity that the eye can scarcely follow 

 their movements. Sometimes they swim by means of 

 vigorous flappings of their arms, which are webbed 

 like the feet of swans. Sometimes they employ their 

 fleshy fins, or else propel themselves backward by 

 forcible and repeated ejaculations of water through 

 the tube or siphon placed in front of their bodies. 



Several instances are on record of the occurrence 

 of Gephalopods of enormous size. Aristotle speaks 

 of a great Cuttle-fish five fathoms in length. Peron 

 found in the sea near Tasmania a specimen, the arms 

 of which measured 6 or 7 inches in diameter. Quoy 

 and Gaymard collected in the Atlantic, near the 

 equator, fragments of an enormous mollusk perhaps 

 of the same kind, whose weight was estimated at 

 200 Ibs. A Cuttle-fish was cast upon the shores of 

 Jutland in 1853, the body of which was cut up by 

 the fishermen for bait, and furnished loads for several 

 wheel-barrows ; a portion of one of the arms was 

 as thick as a man's thigh. Fragmentary tentacles 

 of large proportions are preserved in the Museum 

 of the iloyal College of Surgeons, and in that of King's 

 College, in London. 



A specimen of gigantic dimensions recently seen 

 by the crew of a French man-of-war, escaped capture 

 only by leaving a part of his tail behind him. " On 

 the 30th November, 1861, the French steamer ' Alec- 

 ton' being then about 40 leagues, N.E., off Teneriffe, 

 fell in with a gigantic Cuttle-fish, of a brick-red 

 colour, disporting himself at the surface of the sea. 

 He was hit by several bullets, and at last struck with 

 a harpoon and seized by a cord with a slip knot. At 

 this moment, however, when every preparation was 

 being made to secure it, the animal by a violent 

 effort tore away the harpoon from its soft flesh, and 

 at the same time the noose slipped down to its caudal 



