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GIGANTIC CUTTLE-FISH. 
By W. SAYILLE KENT, E.L.S., F.Z.S., 
SOMETIME ASSISTANT IN THE NATURAL HISTORY DEPARTMENT 
OE THE BRITISH MUSEUM, AND 
LATE SUPERINTENDING NATURALIST TO THE BRIGHTON AQUARIUM. 
[PLATE evil.] 
’E£ aXog old re tt oWa rpsQti kXvtoq ’A/upirplri]. 
T HAT the solid path of facts occasionally yields data for our 
consideration, equalling or even surpassing the most vivid 
creations of fiction, is scarcely anywhere so capable of demon- 
stration as within the realms of Natural Science. 
As an illustration of the above, we may with confidence 
assert, that no kingdom in fairyland was ever invested with 
such a wealth of form and beauty, as has of late years been made 
manifest to us through the revelations of the compound 
microscope. No gem-laden forest of the “Arabian Nights” 
ever grew such wondrous living crystal trees as flourish, unper- 
ceived by the unaided eye, in the smallest pool of brackish 
water. No fairy banquet-table was ever bedecked with ornaments 
of so chaste and rare design as might be borrowed from the 
exhaustless store of exquisitely carved vases, sheaths, or bucklers, 
which shelter from extinction the slender spark of mystic life 
as it exists in Nature’s humblest forms. 
Ascending rapidly from the microscopic to the prodigious, 
we find the same doctrine equally applicable, though nowhere, 
perhaps, with such accumulated force as among that group of 
beings which supplies the title of this contribution. 
The position of the Cuttle-fish in the scale of “Nature,” 
and its general structure as a type of the order to which it 
belongs, have already been so admirably treated upon in the 
pages of this serial,* that a recapitulation of such details would 
be superfluous. It is sufficient for our present purposes to state 
* See article on “ The Cuttle-fish.” By St. George Mivart. — Popular 
Science Review, vol. viii., 1869. 
VOL. XIII. — NO. LI. I 
