Anatomical drawingFig. 7. The common Cuttle-fish (Sepia officinalis),and its internal shell or “sepiostaire.”
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 motionlesson 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.
TheSepiaseldom 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 theinternal 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 maleSepiawhich I dissected at the Brighton Aquarium, July 3, 1875:—
Specimens of another of the Sepiidæ, the diminutiveSepiola(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 alteredfrom 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, theSepiolaadapts 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.
A small cuttle-fishFig. 8. Sepiola Rondeletii.
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 calledLa Trenise. Three of them ranged themselves side by side, and advanced towards, and retired from a solitary one, who, for some reason, was not receivedinto their rank, but faced them. When they withdrew, stern first, to the back of the tank, the lonely one followed them up with apas 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.
Anatomical drawingFig. 9. The common Squid (Loligo vulgaris)and its internal horny shell, or “pen.”
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 littleLoligoas 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 bythe 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 thespecies to which I have referred in another chapter, as being one of the staple baits used in the cod-fishery of that country.[21]
Cluster of eggsFig. 10. Eggs of the common Cuttle-fish (Sepia officinalis).
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 theSepiafastens her eggs, near land, uponseaweeds, 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 noincubationtakes place.
At intervals, for many years past, I have found the eggs of theSepiaandLoligoin early stages of their development, and have hatched them out, without any assistance from their parent, by merely suspending them in sea-water in a tank or tub, and changing the water frequently. The same also has been frequently done at the Brighton Aquarium. This having been proved and demonstrated by actual experiment, it is unnecessary to fortify facts by reasoning. But I have seen a branch of a tree or shrub, measuring more than two feet in height from the base of the broken stem to the upper part of its branches, and fourteen inches from side to side across the tips of the twigs, covered with the eggs ofSepiain single rows along them. I cannot of course, be certain that these were all laid by one female, but it is evident that one could not cover so great an area continuously as an incubator, and that, if it were possible, she would subject herself to unnecessary toil in so doing, seeing that they were all hatchedin a tank, after having been for about ten days deprived of maternal care.
The youngSepiawhen born is much larger than a baby octopus or squid. It is of about the size of a rather small horse-bean. When about half developed, the little animal has the head and eyes disproportionately large, but gradually acquires a greater resemblance to its parent. If the black integument be removed, as one would skin a grape, it may be seen moving in the fluid which fills the egg. Cut down to the little living grape-stone under water, and away it will swim, with all its wits about it, and in possession of all its faculties, with as much facility and self-possession as if it had considerable knowledge of the world. It sees and avoids every obstacle, and if you take it out of the water, in your hand, the precocious little creature, not a minute old, and not sufficiently matured to leave the egg naturally, will spurt its ink all over your fingers. You may tame an old cuttle-fish, and it will learn to know that you are a friend, and intend to do it no harm; but the youngsters are as shy as human babies, and regard every one but their mother as an enemy.
The preference for the light, which I described as exhibited by the young octopus, appears to be common also to the young squid and cuttle-fish. The latter generally seek the surface of the water; sometimes swimming gently by means of the locomotive tube and the undulating movement of the marginal fins, and at others poising their bodies motionless, as if basking. The habit in these two families is not so surprising as it is in the young octopus, because the adultSepiaandLoligoare not cave-dwellers, but frequent the open sea, and often approach the surface.
Anatomical drawingFig. 11. Spawn of the common Squid (Loligo vulgaris).
Fig. 11. Spawn of the common Squid (Loligo vulgaris).
The spawn of the squid (Loligo vulgaris) consists of dozens of semi-transparent, gelatinous, slender, cylindrical sheaths, about four or five inches long, each containing many ova embedded in it, and all springing from one common centre, and resembling a mop without a handle. Johann Bodasch, Professor of NaturalHistory at Prague,[22]calculated that one of these mop-like masses contained 39,766 ova; and by counting those embedded in ten of the long gelatinous, finger-like processes, and weighing them and the remainder, I have verified his estimate, and computed that in the specimen which was the subject of my investigation there were 42,000 perfect young squids. It is evident that comparatively few of them live to arrive at maturity, or the sea would teem with them; and in every existing aquarium it has been found impossible to rear the young cephalopods hatched there. I have never seen these “sea-mops” attached to anything, and the pelagichabits of the calamaries render it probable that they are left floating on the surface of the sea.
A remarkable organ with which some of the cephalopoda are provided is a sac, popularly called the “ink-bag,” in which is stored a deep black secretion, which they are able to employ at will as a protection from rapacious enemies. On the approach of a suspected foe, the animal discharges a quantity of this dense fluid, which renders turbid the surrounding water, and thus enables its owner to escape in the obscurity. There is a communication between this ink-bag and the funnel or locomotor-tube, already described; so that when the ink is ejected, it is forcibly emitted with the stream of water which produces its rocket-like, backward motion. The very effort for escape thus serves the double purpose of propelling the creature away from the danger, and discolouring the water in which it moves.
Oppian has well described this:—
“Th’ endanger’d cuttle thus evades his fears,And native hoards of fluids safely wears.A pitchy ink peculiar glands supplyWhose shades the sharpest beam of light defy.Pursued, he bids the sable fountains flow,And, wrapt in clouds, eludes th’ impending foe.The fish retreats unseen, while self-born nightWith pious shade befriends her parent’s flight.”
“Th’ endanger’d cuttle thus evades his fears,And native hoards of fluids safely wears.A pitchy ink peculiar glands supplyWhose shades the sharpest beam of light defy.Pursued, he bids the sable fountains flow,And, wrapt in clouds, eludes th’ impending foe.The fish retreats unseen, while self-born nightWith pious shade befriends her parent’s flight.”
“Th’ endanger’d cuttle thus evades his fears,
And native hoards of fluids safely wears.
A pitchy ink peculiar glands supply
Whose shades the sharpest beam of light defy.
Pursued, he bids the sable fountains flow,
And, wrapt in clouds, eludes th’ impending foe.
The fish retreats unseen, while self-born night
With pious shade befriends her parent’s flight.”
The position of the ink-bag varies in different families. In the octopus it is buried in the substance of the liver; and this animal does not emit its ink so readily as the cuttle or squid. I have very rarely seen it do so in captivity except when greatly exhausted or persistently irritated. It has been said that after being a few hours in captivity the octopus loses the power of secreting ink. There is no foundation at all for such a statement. When placed in a tank especially reserved for it, in which are no enemies to cause it fear, it has no need to conceal itself, and therefore does not unnecessarily eject its cloudy fluid; but I have never dissectedan octopus, no matter how long it might have lived in confinement, without finding the ink-bag fairly charged, though some of its contents are sometimes emitted when the animal is at the point of death.
The cuttle (Sepia) discharges it on the slightest provocation; and this is sometimes very troublesome and annoying when this species is exhibited in an aquarium. The quantity of water its ink will obscure is really surprising. The fluid is secreted with amazing rapidity, and the black ejection frequently occurs several times in succession. I have often seen a cuttle completely spoil in a few seconds all the water in a tank containing a thousand gallons.
When first taken, theSepiais most sensitively timid. Its keen, unwinking eye watches for, and perceives the slightest movement of its captor; and if even most cautiously looked at from above, its ink is belched forth in eddying volumes, rolling over and over like the smoke which follows the discharge of a great gun from a ship’s port, and mixes with marvellous rapidity with the water, whilst the animal simultaneously recedes to the best shelter it can find.
But, like all of its class, theSepiais very intelligent. It soon learns to discriminate between friend and foe, and ultimately becomes very tame, and ceases to shoot its ink, unless it be teased and excited.
Professor Owen has remarked that the ejection of the ink of the cephalopods serves by its colour as a means of defence, as corresponding secretions in some of the mammalia by their odour.
It is worthy of notice that the Pearly Nautilus and the allied fossil forms are without this means of concealment, which their strong external shells renders unnecessary for their protection.
Fishermen are well acquainted with the fact that the cephalopods—at any rate, our British representatives of theSepiidæ,Calamaries, andOctopoda—habitually discharge, when taken, a jet of water, and the two former sometimes their ink, in the faces of their captors. It has been regarded as doubtful whether this is an intentional act, or whether it is accidental, and consequent onthe bringing of the orifice of the syphon tube above the surface, and the removal of the resistance to the out-pouring current, which, when ejected under water, would, in the one case, have been a means of locomotion, and, in the other, of concealment of their whereabouts. Some have supposed that the emission is involuntary, and is produced much in the same way as the water is tossed up in spray by the screw of a steam-vessel when her stern rises whilst she is pitching heavily in a rough sea. Others, who have experienced the effect of this habit of the animals, have persistently asserted that they take deliberate aim, with the motive of aggression or self-defence.
Mr. Darwin, in his narrative of the “Voyage of the Beagle,” says that whilst looking for marine animals, with his head about two feet above the rocky shore, he was more than once saluted by a jet of water accompanied by a slight grating noise. At first he could not think what it was; but he afterwards found that it was an octopus, which, though concealed in a hole, thus led him to its discovery; and it appeared to him that it could certainly take good aim, by directing the tube or syphon on the under side of its body.
The force with which the water is expelled is often very great. Some of theLoliginæare capable of propelling themselves with such momentum by a vigorous out-rush from the tube, that when this pressure is so exerted as to cause them to take an upward direction, they leap out of water to such a height as to fall on to the decks of vessels, and are called by sailors “flying squids.” Desiring to preserve some specimens of the “little squid” (Loligo media), if possible with their colours unchanged, I put two alive into a bottleful of spirits of wine as the best method of causing their instantaneous death. Both of them immediately “squirted” with such effect that a third part of the spirits of wine was thrown out of the bottle and spilled on the table.
I have no doubt at all that the cephalopods intentionally and deliberately take aim, and that they are able to do so as accuratelyas the “Archer-fish” (Toxotes jaculator), which by the ejection of a drop of water from its mouth, brings down a fly from a branch or leaf three or four feet above the surface of the water.
With the purpose of testing the swimming powers of an octopus, and making other observations connected with its mode of progression through the water, I experimented with one in one of the store tanks at Brighton. I had put him through his paces, and brought him back to the starting-post several times after he had swum to the further end of the tank, and at last the creature became irritated. Instead of sinking to the bottom as he had previously tried to do, he swam along the surface away from me till he reached the back of the tank, where he sustained himself motionless for an instant, and then shot forth a jet of water which struck me on the breast, and drenched my shirt-front, though I was five feet distant from him.
I have known of many amusing instances of this squirting of water or ink by the cuttle-fish startling the victim of it by its unexpected suddenness.
My deceased friend Tom Hood, unaware of this propensity of the animal, hastened to lay hold of one which he had hooked in Looe Harbour, and, receiving itsjet d’eaufull in his face, exclaimed that “he did not exactly know what he had on his line, but he thought he had caught a young garden engine.”
Fishermen, when catching squid as bait, haul them up slowly until they are nearly at the surface of the water, and then “gaff” them by the tail, and hold them at some distance from the boat, to allow them to discharge their ink. The Rev. J. G. Wood mentions an incident of a naval officer’s white-duck trousers being “de-decorated” with the liquid missile of a cuttle; the aggrieved individual asserting that it took deliberate aim for that purpose.
During a Saturday night’s chat with some Sussex fishermen with whom I had often before held pleasant conversation on matters appertaining to their craft, cuttle-fishes, sometimes called by sailors “ink-spewers,” were mentioned, and one of the partyrelated the following adventure of a shipmate who was present. I must tell it in his own language.
“We was out fishin’ one quiet night,” he said, “and had just got our trawl awash, and was a-goin’ to hand it in-board, when Bill, here, all of a sudden lets go his holt, roars out like a stuck pig—“Oh-h-h!—What the —— is that?” and tumbles back’ards into an empty fish-basket. We hadn’t no time to ’tend to him till we’d got our haul on deck, but I guessed what was up; and when we looked round we pretty near split our sides with laughing. There was Bill a-leanin’ back agin the skiff, wipin’ his eyes, to get some muck out of ’em, as he said made ’em smart, and his face for all the world as if Davy Jones had emptied a tar-barrel on his head, and he looking as doleful as a schoolboy as has upset the inkstand over his hands and smeared his face with it in rubbin’ the tears away while he was a-crying for fear the master’d lick him. Well, sir, it were one o’ them scuttles as we’re talkin’ about as we’d brought up, and theycanshoot straight and no mistake. It’s my opinion as Mr. Scuttle sighted Bill’s nose as soon as he come atop of the water and aimed right at it; for you can see, sir, as Bill’s nose looms as red as Beachy Head Light in a fog, and any scuttle as misses it must be a fool. Bill won’t forget that dose of ink for a good while yet—will ’ee, old man?”
Bill is very good natured, and joined heartily in the laugh elicited by the anecdote. The worthy fellow might have retorted that he had seen his friend’s face, and those of half the population of his neighbourhood simultaneously blackened, if not by a cuttle-fish, by an equally singular accident.
In the autumn of 1872, an American full-rigged ship, bound to London, went ashore in Seaford Bay, in consequence of the captain mistaking the lights and (believing himself further up Channel) pointing her head N.E. before he ought to have done so. The vessel was lightly built—a mere bandbox of a craft—and, after beating and thumping for a short time close in shore, she became a total wreck. The masts went by the board, and, asshe broke up, the sewing-machines, metal pails, and other “Yankee notions” with which she had been laden, were rolled and tumbled on the beach by the breakers in a pitiable condition and sad confusion. Amongst her cargo were a hundred casks of lamp-black; and at intervals one and another of these would burst with a crash, and the contents fly out in clouds, like smoke from a gun. The soft impalpable powder did not mix readily with the water, and was carried to the shore and inland by the strong sea-breeze. The coast-guards’ white buildings gradually assumed the hue of the inside of a boiler-flue; the beach, the grass, and the roads in the vicinity looked as if fifty thousand chimney-sweeps had emptied their soot-bags over them; and the stuff fell lightly and gently, like a dust shower, over the throng of anxious spectators, until the ladies appeared as if they were dressed in deep mourning for the catastrophe, and the faces of all, moistened by the salt spray, and bespattered and powdered with the subtle material, became as black as a negro’s, and as shiny as a well-blacked stove. A visitor arriving suddenly amongst them, without access to a looking-glass, might well have believed that he had discovered a colony of panic-stricken Christy minstrels. The sublime, the sorrowful, and the ridiculous have, perhaps, never been more intimately blended than in that scene of dashing, foaming breakers, tossed and battered wreckage, and smutted faces. Even Denys De Montfort’s “colossal poulpe,” which he described as deluging a ship from its syphon tube, would not have had an ink-bag large enough to produce such an effect by its contents.