94 CEPHALOPODS Ag FOOD. 



of Newfoundland only in August, and in Houua Bay first in Sep- 

 tember. Its vast shoals present a curious appearance, by their 

 strongly twisted, compact form. When they approach, hundreds 

 of vessels are ready for their capture. At this season of the 

 year, the sea on the coast of St. Pierre is covered with from 400 

 to 500 sail of English and French ships, engaged in the cuttle- 

 fish fishery. During violent gales of wind, hundreds of tons of 

 them are often thrown up together in beds on the flat beaches, 

 the decay of which spreads an iniolerable diluvium around. It 

 is made no use of. except for bait ; and as iv maintains itself in 

 deeper water than the capelan, instead of nels being used to take 

 it, it is jigged a jigger being a number of hooks radiating from 

 i\ fixed centre, made for the purpose. The cod is in besi condi- 

 tion after having fed on it. Another method of taking them is 

 sometimes resorted to. Fires are made all along the shore 

 during the night, when the loligo. attracted by the light, ap- 

 proaches too near for his safety, and is lefi on the strand by the 

 recess of the tide, when the fishermen go to gather them."" 



Cuttle-fish are extensively used by man as food, 'throughout 

 the world ; and some of the species arc highly esteemed by epi- 

 cures. In treating of the natural history of the ordinary Euro- 

 pean species, we shall have occasion to mention some of the 

 methods of fishing them: it will sullice to narrate here the 

 manner in which they are secured by some of the less civilized 

 races of man. 



In the Polynesian Islands, the natives have a curious contriv- 

 ance for catching cuttle-fish. It consists of a straight piece of 

 hard wood .a foot long, round and polished, and not, half an inch 

 in diameter. Near one end of it, a number of beautiful pieces 

 of the cowrie, or tiger shell are fastened one over another, like 

 the scales of a fish, until it is nearly the size of a turkey's egg, 

 and resembles the cowrie. It is suspended in a horizontal posi- 

 tion by a strong line, and lowered by the fisherman from a. small 

 canoe till it nearly reaches the bottom. The fisherman jerks the 

 line to cause the shell to move, as if it were alive, and the jerking 

 motion is called "tootoofe," the name of the contrivance. The 

 cuttle-fish, attracted by the cowries, darts out one of its arms, 



* Edinb. New Phil Journ., viii, 305. 



