SEPIAD^. CUTTLE. 
171 
spoilt if an iron knife is used, “ becoming tainted thereby, 
owing to the antipathy which naturally exists between 
it and iron;^^ and ^ Dalechamps suggests, that this 
means, it being the nature of its flesh to cling to the 
knife/^ 
The flesh of the /o%o, or squid, was highly esteemed 
by the ancients, and Ephippus recommends the eating 
of squids and cuttle-fish together. 
“ And many polypi, with wondrous curls.” 
Athen., BeipnosopMsU. 
And Sotades, the comic poet, introduces a cook, speak- 
ing as follows : — 
“ To these I added cuttlefish and squills ; 
A fine dish is the squill when carefully cooked, 
But the rich cuttlefish is eaten plain ; 
(Though I did stuff them all with a rich forced-meat 
Of almost every kind of herb and flower).” 
Bk. vii. c. 41, Atlien., I) eipno sophists. 
They are still exposed for sale in the bazaars and mar- 
kets in India. 
With us the squid, or squill, as it is sometimes called 
at Weymouth, is only used as bait. Tt is good for catch- 
ing conger-eels and whiting-pout, also for cod -fishing ; 
but it is also a great enemy to the fisherman, and on the 
French coast they say that the calmar, as they call it, 
often tears the fish from their hooks during the night, 
when they are fishing with lines. The inhabitants of the 
Basque provinctes esteem calmar s highly as food, and call 
them chipirones , and at Bayonne they are also known by 
the same name, as well as by that of cornet or corniche. 
In Japan, squids are regularly collected for food, and 
Mr. Arthur Adams gives, in the ‘ Zoologist,^ p. 7518, an 
* Pliny, Nat. Hist. vol. vi. bk. xxxii.,c. 42. 
