many feet or arms. The aspect of all these animals is strange and uncouth (Fig. 44). Their staring eyes, their

Fig. 44. The Eight-armed Cuttle-fish (front view).

long and flexible arms, and their formidable pair of sharp and horny mandibles, combine to render them unpleasant

France.

neighbors. Surrounding the mouth is a circle of eight strong arms many times the length of the body, while

staring out from either side of the head, between the bases. of the arms, is a pair of large glassy eyes, which send a shudder over the beholder. At the bottom of the sea the poulp turns its eight arms downward, and walks like a huge submarine spider, thrusting its arms into the crevices of the rocks, and extracting thence the luckless crab that had thought itself secure in its narrow retreat from the

attacks of so bulky a foe. This is the "Devil Fish" so graphically but so unscientifically described by Victor Hugo. Each of the arms is covered with what are called suckers, designed for producing adhesion to the object grasped. Each sucker consists of a little, elevated, circular horny ridge, forming a little cup, closed at the bottom by a flexible membrane which is attached to the arm by a The consequence is, that when the arm is pressed upon an object, the bottom of each cup, like a piston, is pressed inward by the action of the stem or piston-rod, which is moved by the pressure of the arm. The effort to escape from the grasp of this arm withdraws the piston back to the bottom of the cup, thus producing a vacuum within, and causing a suction which effectually retains the object. Could any piece of mechanism be more admirable?

stem.

The poulp, also called octopus (eight-footed), sometimes attains a formidable size, and sailors relate terrible stories of those found in the African seas. According to Denys de Montfort, Dens, a navigator, avowed that while three of his men were engaged in scraping the side of the ship, one of these monsters reached up from the water its long and flexible arms, and drew two of the men into the sea. One was never rescued, and the other, after his escape, became delirious and died. This was probably a "sailor's yarn," since the Frenchman who narrated it afterward represented a “Kraken octopod" in the act of scuttling a three-master (Fig. 45),

and told M. Defrance that, if this Fig. 47. Fragment of a straight

were "swallowed," he would, in his

chambered Shell (Ormoceras tenuifilum), showing a large annulated central siphon.

next edition, represent the monster embracing the Straits of Gibraltar, or capsizing a whole squadron of ships. Little reliance as can be placed in the marvelous stories of "those who go down to the sea in ships," it is well authenticated that some of these octopods attain fearful dimensions, being the largest invertebrates known. Milne-Edwards, an eminent Parisian naturalist, has expressed the con

Fig. 48. Trocholites ammonius. A viction that the unexplored

coiled-chambered shell of the Trenton period.

depths of the ocean conceal the forms of octopods that far surpass in magnitude any of the species known to science.

The common cuttle-fish of our own coast is a much more harmless animal, attaining a length of only ten or twelve inches. The calamary of New York Harbor has ten arms, two of which are much longer than the others.

Fig. 49. Clymenia Sedgwickii.

The reader is probably familiar with the sepia used in tinting with water-colors. This is the ink of the cuttle-fish and its allies. It is preserved by the animal in a little. bag, from which it is ejected on the approach of danger, thus producing a cloud, under cover of which the animal escapes. Here is the prototype of the fog which sophistry raises, and under cover of which it retreats, when finding itself in unequal conflict with truth. India ink, it has been stated, is manufactured by the Chinese from the same substance, though it is probable they employ only lampblack and glue, or vegetable gum. The ink-bags of some ancient cuttle-fishes have been found

DO

in a fossil state. Dr. Buckland had drawings of extinct species executed in their own ink. These all are cephalopods, the first class among molluscs, the aristocracy of shellfish, often exercising dominion over beings with higher intelligence, but a weaker arm, just as brawny force has always done. But the forms described belong to the highest of the two orders of the class.