SECTION II.
FOSSIL REMAINS OF NAKED MOLLUSKS, OENS, AND INK-BAGS OF LOLIGO.
It is well known that the common Cuttle Fish, and other living species of Cephalopods,[1] which have no external shell, are protected from their enemies by a peculiar internal provision, consisting of a bladder-shaped sac, containing a black and viscid ink, the ejection of which defends them, by rendering opaque the water in which they thus become concealed. The most familiar examples of this contrivance are found in the Sepia vulgaris, and Loligo of our own seas. (See Pl. 28, Fig. 1.)
It was hardly to be expected that we should find, amid
the petrified remains of animals of the ancient world, (remains
which have been buried for countless centuries in the
deep foundations of the earth,) traces of so delicate a fluid
as the ink which was contained within the bodies of extinct
species of Cephalopods, that perished at periods so incalculably
remote; yet the preservation of this substance is established
and marine shells, with the exception of the Argonaut, Nautilus, Ianthina, Lithodomus, Haliotis, and great radiated crystalline Teredo from the East Indies, exceeded Carara marble in density. This marble and the Haliotis are of equal specific gravities."—De la Beche's Geological Researches, 1834, p. 76.
- ↑ The figure of the common Calmar, or Squid (Loligo Vulgaris Lam.—Sepia loligo of Linnæus,) see Pl. 28, Fig. 1, illustrates the origin of the term Cephalopod, a term applied to a large family of molluscous animals, from the fact of their feet being placed around their heads. The feet are lined internally with ranges of horny cups, or suckers, by which the animal seizes on its prey, and adheres to extraneous bodies. The mouth, in form and substance resembles a Parrot's beak, and is surrounded by the feet. By means of these feet and suckers the Sepia octopus, or common Poulpe (the Polypus of the ancients,) crawls with its head downwards, along the bottom of the sea.
