CEPHALOPODA. 425 



[Subkingdom Molltjsca.] 

 Class Cephalopoda. 



The Cuttle-fish [Sepia officinalis, Linn.]. 



The cuttle-fish would seem to be a complete animal in itself, both 

 male and female ; but how far it is so, I have not yet been able to dis- 

 cover. I should suppose that it impregnates its own eggs. It has a 

 gland on the left side of the belly, which forms or secretes its yolk or 

 the substance of the yolk ; which substance passes backwards to the 

 tail or posterior end, and there gets a covering ; it has a passage on the 

 right for the exit of these yolks when completely formed ; so that these 

 yolks as it were pass round the other viscera. It has two bodies whose 

 outlines are oval, and very much flattened, made up of thin bodies 

 whose sides are in contact, and lie between the gland above described 

 and the opening for the exit of the ova, with their apices forwards, and 

 whose mouths open near the passage of this yolk, as if intended to 

 impregnate these yolks as they pass out, as the male toad does the 

 eggs of the female : or they may be like the soft roe of fishes. It has 

 no. parts for receiving or being received. 



Behind, and somewhat between these two testicles 1 , is a bag filled 

 with a black liquor : on one side of this bag, upon its inner surface, is 

 a thick substance, which is also black. This substance I imagine to be 

 the kidney, as I find nowhere else any thing similar to the kidney, 

 and the bag to be the bladder 2 . From this bladder passes forwards a 

 duct which passes over and between the two bodies [nidamental glands] 

 which I call testicles or soft roes. 



Mem. The tentacula of a cuttle-fish, caught in Newfoundland, 35 

 feet long 3 . 



Animals, whose construction is uncommon, may have parts similar to 



1 [They are the ' nidamental glands ' of the female : see my description of the 

 Hunterian Preparations of the female organs of the Sepia officinalis, ' Physiological 

 Catalogue,' vol. iv. p. 125. Nos. 2652 — 2656. Hunter seems subsequently to have 

 recogni2ed the male cuttle-fish: see Hunt. Preps. Nos. 2371, 2372.] 



2 [lb. No. 2126.] 



3 [Banks and Solander, in the first voyage of Captain Cook, discovered floating in 

 the sea, between Cape Horn and Australia, in lat. S. 30° 44', long. W. 110° 33', a huge 

 cephalopod, upwards of six feet in length from the tips of the arms to the hind end 

 of the mantle. The parts of tliis animal (Enoploteuthis unguiculatd) were pre- 

 sented to Hunter, who preserved sections of the arms (Phys. Series. No. 63), the 

 beak, mouth, and fauces (No. 308), the heart (No. 903), and the hinder end of the 

 mantle, with the terminal pair of rhomboidal fins, in the series of dried pre- 

 parations.] 



