Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/369

 It has also very large eyes in proportion to its size. It is a free swimmer like the cuttle; its spawn is also left to float freely, but in a large circular mass, consisting of an immense number of branches, all containing quantities of ova and united to a common centre. It has been estimated that these "mop-like" masses contain nearly forty thousand eggs. The squid is also privileged to carry an ink-bag, of which he makes very free use; and many fishermen attempting to catch them have experienced the fate of Tom Hood, of whom Mr. Lee tells the anecdote that, being unaware of this propensity of the cuttle-fish and squid, and having caught one of the former on his hook while angling in Love Harbor, he laid hold of it to unhook it, and received its full jet d'eau in the face. On being asked what he had on his line, he replied that he did not know exactly, but he thought he had caught a young garden engine!

As these sorts of creatures are never eaten in this country, it may be news to some that they are very extensively used as food in many countries at the present time, and that the ancient as well as the modern Greeks considered them a delicacy when properly cooked. One cause of the favor in which they are held by the Orthodox Greek Catholics on the shores of the Ægean Sea is the substitute which they offer in place of meat and fish, both of which are forbidden during the long fasts of the Greek Church. A cuttle is practically declared not to be a fish, and certainly it is not meat; and so it finds its way into the pots and frying-pans even of the ecclesiastics during Lent and other fasts in great quantities. A common way of catching them in the Mediterranean is by planting traps of stone jars or earthenware tubes, into which they creep, and are thus drawn up and secured. Everywhere they are used for bait, and the Indians of Vancouver's Island and Alaska eat them with relish, as do the inhabitants of China and the western coast of South America. There is a good story told of a party of savants in England endeavoring to make a dish of one, at a special dinner given for the purpose; but the attempt was a complete failure—no one could swallow a morsel. The ancients described them under the name of polypus, and all classical scholars will recall the frequent references to these animals as articles of diet, especially by the comic poets.

The greatest enemies to the class of cephalopods are the porpoises, dolphins, and conger-eels. The last do not hesitate to attack even a devil-fish of considerable size, while the young are snapped up by a great variety of fishes. In fact, if the great mass of all the spawn produced by the denizens of the ocean were not devoured or otherwise destroyed, the watery world would long ago have become so over-populated as to be unnavigable, and its condition incompatible with the health of the human race.