CUTTLES AND SQUIDS.
[Illustration: 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 of body, including marginal fin 12 ”
” head 3½ ”
” tentacles 21 ”
” 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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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]
[Illustration: 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.
At intervals, for many years past, I have found the eggs of the
_Sepia_ and _Loligo_ in 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 of _Sepia_ in 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 hatched in a tank, after having been for about ten
days deprived of maternal care.
The young _Sepia_ when 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 adult
_Sepia_ and _Loligo_ are not cave-dwellers, but frequent the open
sea, and often approach the surface.
[Illustration: 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 Natural
History 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 pelagic habits 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 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 dissected
an 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, the _Sepia_ is 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, the _Sepia_ is 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 the _Sepiidæ_, _Calamaries_,
and _Octopoda_—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 on the 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 the _Loliginæ_ are 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 accurately
as 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 its _jet d’eau_ full 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 party related
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 they
_can_ shoot 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, as she 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.