each side, having their origin between the first and second pair of legs, which are incrassated at the end, where, also, they are furnished with many suckers. Cuvier supposes they use these as anchors to maintain them in their station during tempests, and as prehensile instruments, by which they can seize their prey at a distance. In the centre of the legs is the mouth, surrounded by a tubular membranous lip, including a beak, consisting of two mandibles, like that of a paroquet; these mandibles or jaws are crooked, and the upper one fits into the lower as a sliding lid into a box. With these redoubtable jaws the cuttle-fish devours fishes, crustaceans and even shell-fish, which receive a further trituration in its muscular crop and its gizzard. By means of the suckers on their legs and arms, they lay such fast hold of their prey as to deprive them of all power of motion; thus they master individuals much larger than themselves. The hard and often spinose crust of crabs or lobsters cannot withstand the action of their trenchant jaws, and they do not fear the gripe of their claws. Their large eyes, which resemble those of vertebrated animals, by their look of ferocity, are enough to create an alarm in the animals they pursue, and are said to see in the night as well as the day. So that although they are not like Pontoppidans Kraken-the notion of which

is thought to have been taken from a large cuttle-fish-half a league in circumference, so as to be mistaken for floating islands, yet they are really as tremendous animals, their size considered, as any that Providence has commissioned to keep within due limits the populace of the waters.

One of their most remarkable and unique features, is the manner in which circulation takes place in them. They have three hearts; the principal one, seated in the middle, sends the blood through the arteries: the blood returns by a vena cava, which dividing into two branches, carries it to the two lateral hearts, each of which sends it to the gills for oxygenation, whence it returns again by the intermediate heart.

The Octopus, called by the French writers the Poulpe, probably a contraction of polype, differs from the common cuttle-fish, having neither the arms nor long tentacles of that animal, and instead of the large heavy bone has only two small cartilages. This different structure is rendered necessary by the difference in their habits. The body of the octopus is small, and it has legs sometimes a foot and a half in length, with about two hundred and forty suckers on each leg, arranged, except near the mouth, in a double series; so that it walks with ease. They are often out of the water,

and frequent rough places, are excellent swimmers, and move rapidly in the water with their head behind. The cuttle-fish, whose legs are short and body heavy, prefer the bottom, and do not attempt to swim, for which they are not well fitted. Providence has, therefore, given them their long arms to compensate for the shortness of their legs.

A remarkable peculiarity distinguishes these animals. They are furnished with an organ which secretes a black fluid, with which they can produce an obscurity in the water that surrounds them, on any appearance of danger, or to conceal themselves from their prey. The Chinese are said to use it in making the ink that bears the name of their country; something similar, but not so black, is prepared from it in Italy; and Cuvier used it to colour the plates for his memoir on these animals.

The second order of cephalopods, or at least the pearly nautilus, differs in several respects from those which constitute the first, and which I have just described, approaching much nearer to the Molluscans. The most striking approximation, and which first catches the eye of the examiner is its shell, which, though its spiral convolutions are not externally visible, exhibits a general resemblance to a univalve shell. To a person who had the opportunity of witnessing the motions of the animal that inhabits

it, the first thing that would strike him, would be the means by which it progressed upon the bed of the sea, he would see no motion produced by the action of tentacular legs furnished with suckers, like those of the cuttle-fish, but instead of it, by a single expansive organ, exhibiting considerable resemblance to the foot of a snail. This organ, Mr. Owen, led by the nervous system, regards as surmounting the head and as its principal instrument for locomotion. The oral organs of this animal are much more numerous and complicated than those of the cuttlefish, and are furnished with no suckers. Its tentacles are retractile within four processes, each pierced by twelve canals protruding an equal number of these organs, so that in all there are forty-eight. In fact, the whole oral apparatus, for the full description of which I must refer the reader to Mr. Owen's excellent tract, except the mandibles and the lip, is formed upon a plan different from that of the cuttle-fish, as likewise from that of the carnivorous trachelipod Molluscans, and indicates very different modes of entrapping and catching their prey.

The eye, also, Mr. Owen states to be reduced to the simplest condition that the organ of vision can assume, without departing altogether from the type of the higher classes, so that it seems not far removed from that of the proper Mol

luscans. In this animal there is only a single heart, the branchial ones being wanting.

There is one circumstance which proves this cephalopod to belong to this shell, and not to be a parasitic animal as that of the argonaut has been supposed to be-it is this, though the whole body appears to reside in the last and largest concameration of the shell, yet there is a small tubular tail-like process which enters the siphon, but which unfortunately was mutilated, only a small piece being left, but enough to shew that the animal had power over the whole shell by means of this organ, hence it follows that a Cephalopod is the animal that forms the shell of the nautilus, and its natural inhabitant, which goes a great way towards settling the controversy concerning the real animal of the argonaut, and amounts almost to a demonstration that the celebrated sailor that uses it as a boat, and scuds gaily in it over the ocean, is no pirate that has murdered its natural owner, but sails in a skiff of his own building.

The only circumstance that now leaves any doubt in the mind of the inquirer, is the very different nature of the cephalopod of the argonaut and the nautilus, the former appearing to be nearly related to the octopus or poulpe, and belonging to the genus Ocythöe of Rafinesque. In this genus the tentacular legs or arms are similar to those of the poulpes, planted