Page:The aquarium - an unveiling of the wonders of the deep sea.djvu/106

Rh then turn it over and over with a stick, and look at the bundle of arms from above and below in turn, now grouped together, and now thrown all abroad in anger at being teased; still you can make out but eight. It was not until after many trials that I at length caught a peep at the missing organs—the pair of long arms,—and discovered that it is the animal's habit to carry them closely coiled up into little balls, and packed down upon the mouth at the bottom of the oral cavity. If we manage to insert the point of a pin in the coil, and stretch out the spiral filament, the little creature impatiently snatches it away, and in a twinkling rolls it up again. A zealous votary of the circular system would seize on this analogy with the spirally folded tongue of a moth, and triumphantly adduce it as additional proof that the Cephalopoda represent, in the Molluscan circle, the Lepidoptera among insects.

While thus hovering motionless in the water, the Sepiola presents a fair opportunity for observing its curious transitions of colour, which are great and sudden. We can scarcely assign any hue-proper to it. Now it is nearly white, or pellucid, with a faint band of brown specks along the back, through which the internal viscera glisten like silver. In an instant the specks become spots, that come and go, and change their dimensions and their forms, and appear and disappear momentarily. The whole body,—arms, fins, and all,—the parts which before appeared free, display the spots, which, when looked at attentively, are seen to play about in the most singular manner, having the appearance of a coloured fluid, injected