4 



One of the Cephalopoda (or rather a portion of the frame of one of 

 that family) is not unfamiliar to us under a different and less 

 scientific aspect. No rambler along the beach, in search of the 

 marvels of life left by the falling tide, can have avoided seeing that 

 common object of the sea-shore called a " Cuttle-Bone," a small white 

 oval body, six or more inches in length, convex on both surfaces 

 very hard on the one side, very soft on the other, and light in weight, 

 This Cuttle-Bone (a section of which is a beautiful microscopic sub- 

 ject, consisting of thin laminae or floors of chalky matter, sup- 

 ported by myriads of minute pillars) 1 is the internal support 2 

 of a certain species of Cephalopoda called Sepia officinalis, a denizen 

 of English waters, abundant enough beneath the waves, though rarely 

 to be found in an unmutilated condition on the shore. 



For a moment let us try to realise this creature, this inhabitant of 

 our seas, by doing so we shall be the better able to comprehend the 

 marked distinctions which separate these beings from our ideal type 

 of ocean life. We shall perceive they neither correspond to Fish, 

 Crustacea, nor Shell-fish, to " Sea-flowers," nor " Dead-mens'- 

 frngers," that they are exceptional, and yet that they are in a certain 

 sense their relatives. 



To picture this Cuttle-fish, Sepia officinalis of 

 naturalists, we must draw an oval obtuse-cone- 

 shaped body, then affix to the sides a flexible line 

 of fins, insert two large eyes at the broadest por- 

 tion of the cone ; place in juxtaposition with those 

 eyes ten long arms, attach to those arms a series 

 of saucer-shaped suckers, and, lastly, hide away 

 within the fleshy cone the cuttle-bone itself. 



We have then, in this portrait, an ideal repre- 

 sentation of the general aspect of the Cephalopoda, 



Sepia officinalis, drawn 



from a specimen pre- conspicuous chiefly and most notably for the ar- 



served in the College L r 



of surgeons. rangement of a fixed number (either eight or ten) of 



long moveable and flexible arms around the head, the arms being fur- 



1 An excellent representation is given in Quekett's Lectures on Histology, fig. 216, 

 D, page 341. 



2 The position which the cuttle -bone occupies in the Cuttle is seen in the dotted 

 lines in the woodcut, fig. 1. 



