Eggs.
Lastly, are the ovaria, or egg-bags of the Cuttle-fish, which are popularly called sea-grapes. The female fish deposits her eggs in numerous clusters, on the stalks of fuci, on corals, about the projecting sides of rocks, or on any other convenient substances. These eggs, which are of the size of small filberts, are of a black colour.
The most remarkable species of Cuttle-fish inhabits the British seas; and, although seldom taken, its bone or plate is cast ashore on different parts of the coast from the south of England to the Zetland Isles. We have picked up scores of these plates and bunches of the egg-bags or grapes, after rough weather on the beach between Worthing and Rottingdean; but we never found a single fish.
The Cuttle-fish was esteemed a delicacy by the ancients, and the moderns equally prize it. Captain Cook speaks highly of a soup he made from it; and the fish is eaten at the present day by the Italians, and by the Greeks, during Lent. We take the most edible species to be the octopodia, or eight-armed, found particularly large in the East Indies and the Gulf of Mexico. The common species here figured, when full-grown, measures about two feet in length, is of a pale blueish brown colour, with the skin marked by numerous dark purple specks.
The Cuttle-fish is described by some naturalists, as naked or shell-less. It is often found attached to the shell of the Paper Nautilus, which it is said to use as a sail. It is, however, very doubtful whether the Cuttle-fish has a shell of its own. There is a controversy upon the subject. Aristotle, and our contemporary, Home, maintain it to be parasitical: Cuvier and Ferrusac, non-parasitical; but the curious reader will find the pro and con.—the majority and minority—in the Magazine of Natural History, vol. iii. p. 535.