employed as oars or feet when moving along the bottom of the sea, and consisting of a circlet of muscular arms or tentacles, in addition to which many of this class have fins. To this same definition of Linnæus belong the Cuttle-fish, the bony scale on the back of which you must have frequently picked up on the sea-shore, and which is employed for making pounce, tooth-powder, for polishing, and other purposes in the arts.

The common cuttle-fish is abundant on the English coasts. Its skin is smooth, whitish, and dotted with red. It attains the length of a foot or more, and is one of the pests of the fishermen, devouring partially the fish which have been caught in their nets. The eggs of the cuttle-fish are frequently cast on shore clustered together. Singularly interesting is the study of these creatures, which are provided with a means of escaping danger, in their inkbags, from which they can at will emit a fluid, darkening the water and thus enabling them to get off. This natural ink of the fish is employed in painting; Cicero tells us that it was anciently used for writing with.

Another property possessed by this class of animals is, that if any of its tentacles or feelers are bitten off, which is often the case the conger eel having a special relish for the dainty morsel -others supply their place, the power of reproduction being given to them. The whale also regales on the cuttle-fish, and the plaice tribe have the same partiality. The most common species form the bait with which one-half of the cod taken at Newfoundland are caught.

The general description of the cuttle-fish may be thus described: the body oblong, or longer than broad, and depressed, sac-like, with two narrow lateral fins of similar substance with the mantle (the outside skin of shell-fish, which covers a great part of the body, like a cloak). There is an internal shell lodged in a sac on the back part of the mantle, somewhat oval and bladder-shaped, being comparatively thick near the anterior end, where it is terminated by a sharp point, affixed, as it were, to its general outline. The whole shell is light and porous, and is formed of thin plates, with intervening spaces, divided by innumerable partitions, and

STORIES RESPECTING CUTTLE-FISH.

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consists chiefly of carbonate of lime, with a little gelatinous and other animal matter, which is most abundant in the internal harder part of the shell. The eyes are very large, and the head is furnished with eight arms, each of which has four rows of suckers and two long tentacles, expanded and furnished with suckers on one side at the extremity. Cuttle-fish are enabled to leap out of the water by the sudden extension, not of their tails, but of their numerous arms, or other processes from their bodies.

In hot climates some of the species of cuttle-fish grow to a prodigious size, and are furnished with a fearful apparatus of arms with suckers, by which they can rigidly fasten upon and convey their prey to the mouth. In the eight-armed species which inhabit the Indian seas these tentacles are said to be no less than nine fathoms in length.

Extraordinary stories have been related of these animals. Pliny mentions the head of one which was as large as a cask, the arms thirty-six feet long. They are described as first darting from side to side in the pools, and fixing themselves so tenaciously to the surface of the stones that great force was required to remove them. When thrown upon the sand, they progressed rapidly in a sidelong shuffling manner, throwing about their long arms, ejecting their inky fluid in sudden violent jets, and staring about with their shining eyes in a grotesque and hideous manner. As food it was highly prized by the ancients, and is still much esteemed in some parts of the world. It is regularly exposed for sale in the markets at Naples, Smyrna, and in the bazaars of India. In a curious Japanese book there is a picture of a man in a boat engaged in catching cuttlefishes with a spear; and also of a fishmonger's shop in Japan, where a number of enormous cuttle-fishes are represented hanging up for sale.

The Rev. Mr. Stewart relates that at Siho Siho, Pauchi, a queen of one of the Pacific islands, was one day seated in the Turkish fashion on the ground, with a large wooden tray in her lap. On this a monstrous cuttle-fish had been placed, fresh from the sea and in all its life and vigour. The queen had taken it up in both hands and brought its body to her mouth, and by a single appli

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FISHING WITH THE CUTTLE-FISH.

cation of her teeth the black juices and blood with which it was filled gushed over her face and neck, while the long sucking arms of the fish, in the convulsive paroxysm of the operation, were writhing about her head like snakes. A more disgusting picture of epicurism it would be difficult to imagine.

Columbus describes the mode of fishing with the cuttle-fish pursued in his time by the natives of Santa Marta :

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They had a small fish, the flat head of which was furnished with numerous suckers, by which it attached itself so firmly to any object as to be torn in pieces rather than abandon its hold. Tying a line of great length to the tail of this fish, the Indians permitted it to swim at large. It generally kept near the surface of the water until it perceived its prey, when, darting down swiftly, it attached itself by its suckers to the throat of a fish, or to the under shell of a tortoise, nor did it relinquish its prey until both were drawn up by the fisherman, and taken out of the water."

In this way the Spaniards witnessed the taking of a tortoise of immense size, and Fernando Columbus himself affirms that he saw a shark caught in this manner on the coast of Veragua.

This account, strange as it may seem, has been corroborated by various navigators, and the same mode of fishing is said to be employed on the eastern coast of Africa, at Mozambique, and at Madagascar.

The South Sea Islanders have a curious contrivance for taking the cuttle-fish, which resort to the holes of the coral rocks, and protrude their arms or tentacles for the bait, but remain themselves firm within the retreat. The instrument employed for taking them consists of a straight piece of hard wood, a foot long, round and polished, and not half an inch in diameter. Near one end of this a number of the most beautiful pieces of the cowry or tiger-shell are fastened, one over the other, like the scales of a fish or the plates of a piece of armour, until it is about the size of a turkey's egg, and resembles the cowry. It is suspended in an horizontal position by a strong line, and is lowered by the fisherman from a small canoe until it nearly reaches the bottom. The fisherman then gently jerks the line, causing the shell to move as if it were

CONTRIVANCE FOR TAKING THE CUTTLE-FISH. 207

inhabited by a fish. The cuttle-fish, attracted, it is supposed, by the appearance of the cowry (for no bait is used), darts out one of its arms, which it winds round the shell and fastens among the openings between the plates. The fisherman continues jerking the line, and the fish puts out successively its other arms until it has fastened itself to the shells, when it is drawn up into the canoe and secured.

In conclusion, I will mention that the cuttle-fish belongs to a period before the Flood, like the nautili; their undigested fossil remains are frequently noticed within the ribs of the Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri in the limestone rocks, showing that then, as in the present day, to eat and to be eaten was the general law of

nature.

CHAPTER XX.

PHENOMENA OF THE OCEAN--ATMOSPHERIC

INFLUENCES.

"Truly great and transcendantly beautiful, O Jehovah! are these Thy works even here below. Framed they are in profound wisdom, disclosing all their charms only to our lens-aided eyes. How grand, then, will be those which-when the glass has been removed in which we see darkly-when this mist of mortality has been scattered-Thou art pledged to reveal hereafter to Thy servants that have worshipped Thee here in sincerity and truth!" HEDWIG.

HE navigators in the Northern seas have the opportunity of witnessing to perfection some curious phenomena, among which I may mention the Mirage, a name given by the French to an optical deception in the atmosphere by which a ship appears as if transferred to the sky. These appearances were regarded by the credulous, in former times, as supernatural; but they are referred to the refractive and reflective properties of the atmosphere. Not only is there an increase in the vertical dimensions of the objects affected, so that low coasts frequently assume a bold and precipitous outline, but objects sunk below the horizon are brought into view with their natural position changed and distorted.

Dr. Hayes, in his "Open Polar Sea," gives the following vivid description of the optical delusion :

"These Arctic skies," he says, "do sometimes play fantastic