[Illustration: Eggs.]
Lastly, are the _ovaria_, or egg-bags of the Cuttle-fish, which are
popularly called _sea-grapes_. The female fish deposits her eggs
in numerous clusters, on the stalks of fuci, on corals, about the
projecting sides of rocks, or on any other convenient substances.
These eggs, which are of the size of small filberts, are of a black
colour.
The most remarkable species of Cuttle-fish inhabits the British seas;
and, although seldom taken, its bone or plate is cast ashore on
different parts of the coast from the south of England to the Zetland
Isles. We have picked up scores of these plates and bunches of the
egg-bags or grapes, after rough weather on the beach between Worthing
and Rottingdean; but we never found a single fish.
The Cuttle-fish was esteemed a delicacy by the ancients, and the
moderns equally prize it. Captain Cook speaks highly of a soup he made
from it; and the fish is eaten at the present day by the Italians, and
by the Greeks, during Lent. We take the most edible species to be the
_octopodia_, or eight-armed, found particularly large in the East
Indies and the Gulf of Mexico. The common species here figured, when
full-grown, measures about two feet in length, is of a pale blueish
brown colour, with the skin marked by numerous dark purple specks.
The Cuttle-fish is described by some naturalists, as naked or
shell-less. It is often found attached to the shell of the Paper
Nautilus, which it is said to use as a sail. It is, however, very
doubtful whether the Cuttle-fish has a shell of its own. There is a
controversy upon the subject. Aristotle, and our contemporary, Home,
maintain it to be parasitical: Cuvier and Ferrusac, non-parasitical;
but the curious reader will find the _pro_ and _con._--the majority
and minority--in the _Magazine of Natural History_, vol. iii. p. 535.
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