166 A MOLLUSK WITH PEN, INK, AND ERASES. 



tribes hunt and kill octopods, often large enough to be dangerous foes in 

 a quarrel, by going to their haunts in canoes and spearing thein. To 

 some small tribes the octopus affords the chief supply of animal food. 



There is no reason why squid flesh from the North Atlantic Ocean 

 should not become available as food, and prove desirable to those who 

 like it. It would be both wholesome and cheap, and a single architeu- 

 tliis would furnish a meal for a frigate's crew. In Bermuda the Octopus 

 granulatus regularly forms a portion of the fare of the fisher-families ; 

 and as Bermudan fish wander across to the Florida reefs, no doubt this 

 habit prevails there also. In New York City there is a considerable sale 

 of fresh squids to foreign residents, and this trade is increasing. 



In addition to its value as bait, a source of oil (our Ommastrephes has 

 been thus utilized), and as a possible food, the cephalopods contribute 

 two or three useful articles to commerce. A large portion of them carry 

 under the skin of the back a long, flat, calcareous " bone " or plate, which 

 serves as a stay or support to the frame in lieu of a skeleton. In some 

 species it is slender, like a quill pen. This bone reduced to powder forms 

 a useful pounce, " used in rewriting over erasures to prevent blotting, and 

 in medicine is an antacid." It is also combined into a dentifrice; and is 

 fed to caged birds. For this latter purpose many thousands of pounds of 

 cuttle-bone are brought into the "United States every year, furnished chief- 

 ly from China, but also collected floating in the Mediterranean. None 

 of our American species afford a useful cuttle-bone, however, so that this 

 import can scarcely be diminished. The name calamary is often applied 

 to a cuttle-fish, and arises from the fact that, each of them carries in an 

 internal gland a supply of blue-black, ink-like liquid, which, upon the 

 slightest alarm, he discharges into the water, making a dense cloud, under 

 cover of which he rapidly retreats. 



This ink, removed and dried into little cakes, with a greater or less 

 adulteration, forms the sepia of painters and the Indian-ink of draughts- 

 men. At present it is brought almost wholly from Oriental ports, but it 

 might probably be procured on our coast as well. Provided with pen 

 and ink on all occasions, these mollusks seem truly to stand at the head 

 of the class of animals they represent, not wholly because of their superior 

 size and loftier brain, but also on the score of literary accomplishments. 



There are frightful tales abroad of the ferocity with which the larger 

 of these creatures will attack man, and they are greatly dreaded by the 

 shell-divers of the South Seas; but the truth is, the cuttle-fish is timid, 

 and will hide or run away whenever he can from anything so large and 

 strange as a man — that is, any cuttles smaller than the giants of New- 



