SQUIDS, CUTTLE-FISH, AND THEIR ALLIES 165 
pletely over and beyond it. Seizing his hatchet 
. . . one of the men succeeded in severing 
these limbs . . . and the creature, finding 
itself worsted, immediately disappeared beneath 
the water.” 
The portion of each severed arm proved 
to be nineteen feet in length, and it was esti¬ 
mated that at least another six feet of each 
limb remained attached to the creature’s 
body. 
Possibly the best known of all the decapods, 
by name, at all events, if not in the flesh, is 
the cuttle-fish or sepia, for not only does it 
supply the “ cuttle-bone ” that we hang up 
in the cages of small birds, a commodity that 
was also used in a pulverized and burned state 
by the Roman ladies in olden days as a face- 
powder, but it also yields the dark-brown 
pigment known as sepia. The crystal-like 
lenses of the creature’s eyes, moreover, were 
formerly worn by the Genoese women on 
festival days as beads, the internal surfaces 
giving forth beautiful opal-like colours. We 
also read that the ancient Peruvians utilized 
these lenses as ornaments, and in the British 
Museum there are several large specimens 
that were found in the eyes of some Peruvian 
mummies. Furthermore, it is stated that 
the inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands 
