22 
SEA MONSTERS UNMASKED. 
tongue of the toad and the lizard. These long tentacles 
are not used when the food is within reach of the shorter 
arms. 
The calamaries or squids of our British Seas seize their 
prey in the same manner as Sepia, and the description of one 
will suffice for both. But there exist two groups of them, 
which are armed with curved and sharp-pointed hooks or 
claws, either in addition to, or instead of suckers. In the 
one group {Onychoteuthis), the hooks are restricted to the 
extremities of the pair of tentacles, in the other {Enoploteu- 
this), both the tentacles and the shorter arms have hooks. 
Professor Owen, in his description of these hook-armed 
calamaries in the CyclopcBdia of Anatomy, notices also 
another structure which adds greatly to their prehensile 
power (Fig. 4.). "At the extremity of the long tentacles a clus- 
ter of small, simple, unarmed suckers may be observed at the 
base of the expanded part. When these latter suckers are 
applied to one another the tentacles are securely locked 
together at that part, and the united strength of both the 
elongated peduncles can be applied to drag towards the 
mouth any resisting object which has been grappled by the 
terminal hooks. There is no mechanical contrivance which 
surpasses this structure ; art has remotely imitated it in 
the fabrication of the obstetrical forceps, in which either 
blade can be used separately, or, by the inter-locking of a 
temporary blade, be made to act in combination." 
The cephalopods obtain and eat their food very much 
like the rapacious birds. They are the falcons of the sea. 
Some of them, like Onychoteuthis, strike their prey with 
talons and suckers also, others lay hold of it with 
suckers alone ; but they all tear the flesh with their beaks, 
and swallow and digest their food in the same manner as 
the hawk or vulture. 
