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Front View of the Hideous Cuttle-Fish
like those of a cat. The mouth is placed in dible is the uppermost; these mandibles the space inclosed by the arms; it consists do not cover bone, but their interior is of a thick circular lip around an orifice; filled with a fibrous substance of great strength and solidity. The muscles in moment the two stared at each other with which the jaws are imbedded, and by mutual surprise: after a time the officer which they are worked, are extremely advanced a little, when, quick as thought, powerful; the jaws are, in fact, capable the poulp discharged a spray of ink, and of stripping off the armor from crabs and taking good aim at the snowy pants, spat lobsters, and of cutting up the flesh of tered them with indelible stains, which ren fishes. It has a strong, muscular gizzard, lined with a leathery skin. In this gizzard > the food is ground to pulp. It may be termed the mill-hopper where the grist is ground.
Extraordinary Ink-bottle. dered them, ever after, unpresentable.
The Monkey and the Dolphin.
Speaking of the strange creatures of the sea, there is an old fable concerning the Monkey and a fish, which has been turned into rhyme, and describes a curious engraving which you see in connection with this article. The Dolphin is a fish usually six feet in length, and quite common in the In addition to its other extraordinary endowments, the Cuttle-fish is supplied with an ink-bag enfolded in the mass of the liver, containing the substance called sepia, and Mediterranean Sea. It was well known formerly used, it is said, the Chinese, to the Greeks, and was an object of great in making Indian-ink. The reature has interest on account of the surprising the power of ejecting this through its changes of color when it was dying. It is siphons placed on the left side of the one of the most remarkable of the finny abdomen, so as to render it an effectual tribes, and you will doubtless be interested means of defence. Powerful as it is, how- in the poem which pictures the adventure ever, for the destruction of various kinds of the Monkey and this fish. of sea animals, it has enemies superior in Monkeys do many wonderful things, strength to itself, such as the grampus and seem to have a great deal of intelliand the cachalot. When its quick eyes gence. They are very expert climbers, perceive one of these huge monsters ap- can ride very rapidly on horseback, and proaching, it ejects a quantity of its inkymight do so strange a thing as to ride a fluid into the water, which immediately Dolphin. But if the Dolphin should hapspreads around into a dark cloud; while pen to plunge under water, what in the the enemy is floundering about, bewil- world would become of the Monkey? dered and astonished, in this murky fog, Monkeys are not expert swimmers, and the nimble Cuttle darts away and con- have no particular liking for water. They ceals himself in the mud at the bottom, are like a great many children in this or the safe fissure of some neighboring respect; they make up terrible faces durrock. ing the distressing process of being made The use of this ink-battery as a means clean. It is not often that any story is alike of defensive and offensive warfare, told in fable of the Monkey tribes. You is evinced by an anecdote of a British understand that a fable is something officer, who, on a certain occasion, had which is not true, but which is intended gone ashore to collect shells, happening to teach a lesson. It is a supposition to be attired in a pair of snow-white pan- merely, yet many fables, especially those taloons. As he was walking about, he of Æsop, have been read for ages, and suddenly came upon a Cuttle-fish, snugly with some of them nearly all persons have harbored in the recess of a rock. For a become familiar