PAPER NAUTILUS. 263 
Those weird, horrifying creatures, the Ocfopi, are very soft- 
bodied, and live on shore just below or at low-water mark, or 
in deeper water. They have no shell or pen. Octopus punc. 
tatus Gabb expands 44 metres (14 feet) from tip to tip of the 
outstretched arms. They are brought of this size into the 
markets of San Francisco, where they are eaten by Italians 
and Chinese. An Indian woman at Victoria, Vancouver 
Island, in 1877, was seized and drowned by an Octopus, prob- 
ably of this species, while bathing on the shore. Smaller spe- 
cies on coral reefs sometimes seize collectors or natives, and 
fastening t» them with their relentless suckered arms tire 
and frighten to death the hapless victim. Octopus Bairdit 
Verrill (Fig. 219) inhabits the Gulf of Maine at from fifty 
to one hundred fathoms. 
The Argonauta, or paper nautilus, has a beautiful, delicate 
shell. A. argo lives in the Mediterranean, and in deep water 
70 to 100 miles off the coast of Southern New England. The 
animal lives in the shell, but is not permanently attached to 
it, the shell not being chambered, and holds on to the 
sides by the greatly expanded terminations of two of its 
arms, which secrete the shell. The males are very small, not 
more than five centimetres (one inch) in length. During 
the reproductive season the third left arm becomes larger 
and different in form from the others, and becoming encysted 
is finally detached from the body, and deposited by the male 
within the mantle-cavity of the female, where the eggs in a 
way unknown are fertilized by the spermatic bodies, The 
free arm was supposed originally to be a parasitic worm, and 
was described under the name of Hectocotylus. — 
The living species of Cephalopods have'a wide geographi- 
cal range, and a high antiquity, the earliest forms appearing 
in the Lower Cambrian Period, while the type culminated in 
the Triassic,Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods, 
Cass III.—CEPHALOPODA. 
Moitusks with the head-lobe divided into arms, usually provided with 
suckers ; eyes, more highly organized than in any other invertebrates 5 
