SUCKERS. 



83 



it just crawls exactly as a large spider might be 

 supposed to do. 



On the arms, legs, feet, or tentacles of the 

 cuttles, are arranged rows of suckers, which are 

 capable of taking a very firm hold of any object 

 to which they are applied, aided in some species 

 by sharp hooks. If any one of these suckers is 

 examined, it will be found to be the living type 

 of the air-pump, an exhausting syringe that was 

 in full operation thousands of ages before man 

 worked in metals, and more perfect than the 

 best air-pump ever made. For there are extant 

 many specimens of fossil cuttle-fish, the relics of 

 one of which, by the way, are familiar to most 

 people by the title of "thunderbolts" — long 

 cylindrical bodies, composed of calcareous spar, 

 pointed at one end, and slightly hollowed at the 

 other, not unlike an elongated Minie bullet, and 

 which, when cut or broken across, display a 

 radiated structure. 



If an arm of a cuttle be taken, and any one 

 sucker examined, it will be seen to consist of 

 a thick muscular membranous cup, having a 

 cavity at the bottom, something like the chamber 

 at the bottom of a mortar. The sucker should 

 now be divided longitudinally, and then at the 

 end of this " chamber " will be seen a soft 

 G 2 



