The Cuttle. Sepia 



A pair of flat, narrow fins edge the body all around. At one end 

 is the head, which bears two large black eyes and a crown of 

 eight short arms, flattened and pointed, each one black and 

 smooth outside — white on the inner faces and studded with four 

 rows of suckers. One on each side, directly above the eyes, are 

 two long tentacles, slender and smooth except at their extrem- 

 ities which widen into spoon-shaped expanses lined with suckers. 

 These tentacles are so flexible that when the creature desires 

 it can draw them into pockets in the head, completely hiding 

 them from view. 



The cuttle is not a patient mollusk. It resents your poking 

 it with a stick. You were not expecting to be sprayed with a 

 liquid black as ink. But the cuttle is at bay, and uses its natural 

 weapon. In the water it swims by throwing out in jets the 

 water that continually enters the gill-chamber, and finds exit 

 through the funnel. Beset by an enemy, the cuttle presses a but- 

 ton and behold! a cloud of ink darkens the water, confuses the 

 pursuer, and the cuttle scuttles to a safer neighbourhood. 



The ink of the ancients was obtained from this mollusk's 

 ink bottle. Painters got their sepia colour from the same source. 

 This is the genuine, original India ink, for which no satisfactory 

 substitutes have been manufactured. 



Denys Montfort, the most voluminous writer on squids, 

 declares that although the ink-bag of Sepia is rarely larger than 

 a man's thumb, the force exerted upon the bag throws the jet 

 of ink six feet ; and this one bagful is enough to colour black several 

 buckets of water. 



A dead cuttle does not let its ink flow freely until the body 

 is perfectly relaxed. In extracting sepia mk commercially the 

 Chinese pile the cuttles in vats and drain off the fluid which 

 flows without restraint after the cuttle has been dead twenty- 

 four hours. 



Carry your specimen home in a bucket of sea water, and 

 put it in a roomy aquarium. It will be shy at first, but on ac- 

 quaintance will show its tricks freely. The use of those eight 

 arms will be demonstrated if you drop in a shrimp after the 

 cuttle has fasted a few hours. 



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