Fig. 9. The common Squid (Loligo vulgaris)
and its internal horny shell, or “pen.”
These “little squids” are impudently voracious. I have seen one in single combat with a young dog-fish about four inches long. At first I thought the fish was the aggressor, and had seized one of the tentacular arms of the little Loligo as a good substitute for a worm; but it was soon apparent that the affray had been provoked by the carnivorous cephalopod, and that the puppy-fish would get the worst of it;—so they were separated.
The common squid (Loligo vulgaris) is sometimes met with by the trawlers off Brighton, and brought to the Aquarium in considerable numbers. On the Sussex coast this species does not appear to assemble in very large brigades, but rather in small companies. No adult individuals have been received. They are all “youths in their teens,” not full-grown squids; to which they bear the same proportion in size as a drum-and-fife-band of boys to a regiment of stalwart soldiers. The largest English calamary I have seen, though larger specimens have been cast ashore on the west coast of Ireland, is one which my friend Dr. Bowerbank kindly sent to me, of a species comparatively rarely found in British home-waters,—Ommastrephes sagittatus. Its dimensions were as follows:—
Length from front of head to point of tail, 21½ inches.
Circumference of body, 14 inches.
Greatest breadth across tail-fins, 14 inches.
Length of each tentacular arm, 28 inches.
Length of spread from tip to tip of the two tentacular arms,
4 feet 10 inches.
It was taken in the mackerel nets, and brought into Hastings by one of the fishing boats on the 26th of September, 1873. Unfortunately it had been much bruised and knocked about by its captors. On endeavouring to extract the internal horny shell, gladius, or “pen,” which Mr. Gwyn Jeffreys well describes as resembling a very long oar with a broad handle, I found that it had been sadly smashed and broken across into many pieces. Fishermen often handle very roughly animals taken in their nets which have no value as marketable food, and this splendid squid had probably been dashed down on the deck of the boat with great violence. A pretence of some pains having been taken to keep it alive was, I am told, afterwards made. Although the “sagittated calamary” is uncommon on our own shores, it visits annually the coasts of Newfoundland in vast shoals, and is the species to which I have referred in another chapter, as being one of the staple baits used in the cod-fishery of that country.[21]
Fig. 10. Eggs of the common Cuttle-fish (Sepia officinalis).
The eggs of the various families of cephalopods differ greatly from each other. Those of the Cuttle (Sepia) are like black grapes, each having a flexible stalk looking and feeling like india-rubber. The mother takes a turn with this stalk round the stem of the twig or seaweed to which she wishes to attach the egg; the india-rubber-like material is soft and sticky when first laid; and so, instead of splicing the loop, she brings the end round to the base of the stalk, close to the egg, and cements or welds it there into a solid ring. Thus the eggs are attached, one by one. Sometimes the stalk of one is fastened round that of another, and occasionally the process is repeated until the whole mass is made up in this way, without any central stem. The work is as well and neatly done as if skilled hands had been employed on it, but how the mother cuttle-fish effects it, I believe no one knows. I hope we may some day have opportunities of watching her.
Aristotle wrote that the Sepia fastens her eggs, near land, upon seaweeds, reeds, and other bodies which may be found on the shore, and even around sticks and faggots placed there for the purpose of entrapping her. “She does not lay them all at once,” he says, “but at several intervals, the operation lasting fifteen days; and after the oviposit is completed she sheds her ink upon them, which turns them from white to black, and causes them to increase in bulk.” He also avers that she hatches them in the place where she has deposited them, and is often to be seen with her body resting on the ground, and covering them. I do not think that the dark hue of the membranous integuments of the eggs, and of their pedicle, or foot-stalk, is in any way attributable to their being stained by the animal’s inky secretion, although I have frequently seen masses of these eggs the integument of which was not black, but perfectly colourless and pellucid. That the mother broods over them, and protects them till they are hatched, is quite in accordance with the observed habits of the octopus, and is, therefore, not improbable. But, as with the octopus, I am satisfied that no incubation takes place.