for they have three hearts.” After that it need not be stated that they possess respiratory organs and a blood circulation. Man and woman can blush and change colour; so can the cuttle-fish; but it turns darker instead of paler, and its emotion has another effect—numerous little warts suddenly appear on its surface.
In spite of the exaggerations of some writers, the size of many of these animals is very large, as has been attested by trustworthy authorities. Mr. Beale,[39] engaged in searching for shells on the rocks of Bonin Island, was seized by one which measured across its expanded arms four feet, the body not being larger than a clenched hand. He describes its cold, slimy grasp as sickening. His tormentor was killed by a cut from a large knife, but its arms had to be released bit by bit. In the museum of Montpellier there is one six feet long. Péron, a French naturalist, saw in the Australian seas one eight feet long. The travellers Quoy and Gaimard picked up in the Atlantic Ocean the skeleton of an enormous mollusc, which, according to their calculations, must have weighed 200 lbs. In the College of Surgeons a beak or mandible of a cuttle-[pg 149]fish is preserved, which is larger than a human hand. In 1853 a gigantic specimen was stranded on the coast of Jutland, which furnished many barrow-loads of flesh and other organic matter.
THE OCTOPUS (Octopus vulgaris.)
Who has not heard of the kraken, the terror of the northern seas? Naturalists and others long ago gave credence to the assertions of certain Scandinavian writers who believed themselves in the existence of a great sea-monster capable of arresting and annihilating vessels. This kraken was made to embrace a three-masted vessel in its arms. “If,” says laughing De Montfort, “my kraken takes with them, I shall make it extend its arms to both shores of the Straits of Gibraltar.” A Bishop of Bergen assured the world that a whole regiment could easily manœuvre on the back of the kraken. All this, however, probably arose from the observation of some extraordinarily large specimen. An apparently well-authenticated fact is the following, vouched for by a French naval officer, and the then French Consul at the Canaries.
The steam corvette Alecton fell in, between Teneriffe and Madeira, with a sea-monster of the cuttle kind, said to be fifty feet long, without counting its eight arms; it had two fleshy fins; they estimated its weight at close on two tons. The commander allowed shots to be fired at it, one of which evidently hit the animal in a vital part, for the waves were stained with blood. A strong musky odour was noticed. This is characteristic of many of the cephalopods.
“The musket shots not having produced the desired results, harpoons were employed, but they took no hold on the soft, impalpable flesh of the marine monster. When it escaped from the harpoon, it dived under the ship, and came up again at the other side. They succeeded at last in getting the harpoon to bite, and in passing a bowline hitch round the posterior part of the animal. But when they attempted to hoist it out of the water the rope penetrated deeply into the flesh, and separated it into two parts, the head with the arms and tentacles dropping into the sea and making off, while the fins and posterior parts were brought on board: they weighed about forty pounds.” The crew wished to pursue it in a boat, but the commander refused, fearing that they might be capsized. “It is probable,” says M. Moquin-Tandon,[40] “that this colossal mollusc was sick, or exhausted by a recent struggle with some other monster of the deep.”
Most of the cephalopods secrete a blackish fluid, which they can eject in moments of danger, and thus cloud themselves in obscurity. This fluid was known to the Romans, who made ink from it. It is the leading ingredient in Indian ink and sepia to-day. A story is told of an English officer abroad who went out just before dinner-time for a walk on the beach, where he came across a cuttle-fish sheltering under a hollow rock. For a time each watched the other in mute astonishment, but the cuttle-fish had the best of it in the end. The aroused animal suddenly ejected a fountain of its black fluid over the officer’s trousers, which was the more annoying inasmuch as they were of white duck!
The bone of the cuttle, powdered, has long been used, in combination with chalk, &c., as a dentifrice, so that the “monstrum horrendum” of Virgil is of some use in the world.
The sixth family of the Dibranchiata contains only one genus, Argonauta, of which the paper nautilus is a pleasing example. “Floating gracefully on the surface of the sea, trimming its tiny sail to the breeze, just sufficient to ruffle the surface of the waves, behold the exquisite living shallop! The elegant little bark which thus plays with the current is no work of human hands, but a child of nature: it is the argonaut, whose tribes, decked in a thousand brilliant shades of colour, are wanderers of the night in innumerable swarms on the ocean’s surface!” The Greek and Roman poets saw in it an elegant model of the ship which the skill and audacity of the man constructed who first braved the fury of the waves. To meet it was considered a happy omen. “O fish justly dear to navigators!” sang Oppian; “thy presence announces winds soft and friendly: thou bringest the calm, and thou art the sign of it!” Aristotle and Pliny both gave careful descriptions of it. In India the shell fetches a great price, and women consider it a fine ornament. Dancing-girls carry them, and gracefully wave them over their heads.