Fig. 7. The common Cuttle-fish (Sepia officinalis),
and its internal shell or “sepiostaire.”

The common cuttle-fish (Sepia officinalis), (often called by sailors the “scuttle”), though flabby and clammy in death, is a lovely object when alive. Unlike, the skulking, hiding octopus, but equally rapacious, it loves the day-light and the freedom of the open sea. Its predatory acts are not those of a concealed and ambushed brigand lying in wait behind a rock, or peeping furtively from within the gloomy shadow of a cave; but it may better be compared to the war-like Comanche vidette, seated motionless on his horse, and scanning from some elevated knoll a wide expanse of prairie, in readiness to swoop upon a weak or unarmed foe. Poised near the surface of the water, like a hawk in the air, the sepia moves gently to and fro in its tank by graceful undulations of its lateral fins,—an exquisite play of colour occasionally taking place over its beautifully barred and mottled back. When thus tranquil, its eight pedal arms are usually brought close together, and droop in front of its head, like the trunk of an elephant, shortened; its two longer tentacular arms being coiled up within the others, and unseen. Only when some small fish is given to it, as food, is its facility of rapid motion displayed. Then, quickly as a kingfisher darts upon a minnow, it pounces on its prey, enfolds it in its fatal “cuddle”[19] or embrace, and retires to a recess of its abode to tear it piece-meal with its horny beak, and rend it into minutest shreds with its jagged tongue. In shallow water, however, it will often rest for hours on the bottom, after a hearty meal, looking very much like a sleepy tortoise. The cuttle-fishes are so voracious that fishermen regard them as unwelcome visitors. Some localities on our own coasts are occasionally so infested by them that the drift-netting has to be abandoned, in consequence of their devouring the fish, or rendering them unsaleable by tearing them with their beaks as they hang in the meshes.

The Sepia seldom lives long in confinement. Although, like the calamaries, it often swims gently forward by the use of its side fins, its usual mode of rapid progress is the same as that of the octopus; namely, darting backwards by the ejection of a stream of water through the funnel. In a limited space, like an aquarium tank, there is not sufficient room for its rocket-like rush, and therefore its hinder extremities so frequently come in contact with the rock-work, that the skin is worn through until the edge of the internal shell, or “sepiostaire” is visible, and death follows. The animal cannot see behind it; and so it often happens that it similarly comes to grief in its natural habitat, especially in calm weather, when, as Edward Forbes says, “not a ripple breaks upon the pebbles to warn it that the shore is near. An enemy appears: the creature ejects its ink,[20] like a sharp-shooter discharging his rifle ere he retreats, and then, darting away, tail foremost, under cover of the cloud, grounds itself high upon the beach, and perishes there.”

The following are the dimensions of a fine male Sepia which I dissected at the Brighton Aquarium, July 3, 1875:—

Diameter of body across the back and lateral fins 9½ in.
Length ofbody, including marginal fin12 ”
”head 3½ ”
”tentacles21 ”
”shorter arms 6 ”
”sepiostaire, or “bone”10¼ ”

Specimens of another of the Sepiidæ, the diminutive Sepiola (S. Rondeletii)—a veritable Liliputian among cuttles—are sometimes caught in shrimp-nets, and brought to the Aquarium. The mantle-sac enclosing the body of this little Tom Thumb cephalopod is about an inch in length, and in shape like a short wide-bore mortar. The head may be supposed to be the tompion fixed in the muzzle; and where the trunnions would be are two little flat fins of rounded outline. The large goggle eyes seem to be out of all proportion to the size of their owner; but they are, apparently, “all the better to see with,” either to watch for a tender young shrimp coming within arm’s reach, or to perceive an approaching enemy. Sepiola, like its comparatively Brobdingnagian relatives, has the faculty of rapidly changing colour, and, if angered or alarmed, its hue is almost instantaneously altered from a pale parchment dotted with pink, to a deep reddish brown. In its habits this little animal differs as much from the sepia as the latter from the octopus. It naturally buries itself up to its eyes in the sand; but as sand is apt to harbour impurities, which in a bowl or tank become corrupt, and generate poisonous sulphuretted hydrogen, the bottom of these receptacles is usually covered with fine shingle. It is most interesting to notice how, in obeying its burrowing propensity, the Sepiola adapts itself to its circumstances, and entirely deviates from its customary mode of procedure. To make a sand pit for its hiding-place, it will direct upon it strong jets of water from its funnel, and thus blow out a cavity in which to seat itself, and allow the disturbed particles to settle over and around it; but, as the pebbles are too heavy to be thus displaced by its blasting apparatus, it removes them, one at a time, by means of its arms, which are large and strong in proportion to its little short body.

Fig. 8. Sepiola Rondeletii.

Now and again specimens of the “little squid” (Loligo media) are brought in. Their movements are very graceful and pleasing. They are gregarious, like other squids, and keep close together. By the action of their tail-fins, they can either “go a-head” or “turn astern;” and it is very interesting to watch their manœuvres. We once had in one of the tanks four of these “little squids” (which are only about four inches long), and I was much amused by seeing them perform, in a most ludicrous manner, the quadrille figure called La Trenise. Three of them ranged themselves side by side, and advanced towards, and retired from a solitary one, who, for some reason, was not received into their rank, but faced them. When they withdrew, stern first, to the back of the tank, the lonely one followed them up with a pas seul. But there the similitude ended. He was repeatedly driven backwards to his former position, and was not allowed the privilege of taking his partner with him.