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In addition to the fishes mentioned in the last three chapters, which practical experience has proved may be more or less readily acclimatised in marine aquaria, there are many others, and the list is being added to almost every week. The conger-eel (Conger vulgaris); john dory (Zeus faber), a lovely fish when alive, whose common name is corrupted from the French jaune dorée, an apt allusion to its burnished golden body; the fork-beard (Raniceps trifurcatus); the singular gar or guard fishes (Belone vulgaris), whose slender elongated, silvery body terminates in formidable jaws, armed with sharp teeth; the mud fish-a singular illustration of the "missing links" between amphibians and fishes; the lovely and graceful smelts; sting rays; sur-mullets; skates of all kinds, &c., are among the commoner kinds exhibited alive. The study of marine fishes is now removed from the mere examination of dried skins or shrunk specimens preserved in spirits, to where they can be seen in their natural element, graceful as butterflies in their motions, and many of them hardly less brilliantly coloured. There we can watch out every stage of their life-history, from the extrusion of the spawn to the adult fish, and can understand from their habits of life the meaning of many a structural peculiarity, many a tint and spot and ornament, which before we should have rashly assigned to some freak of Almighty Power, unaware that we were then exercising a mental act that savours of blasphemy!

CHAPTER XIV.

CUTTLE-FISH, MOLLUSCA, ETC., OF MARINE
AQUARIA.

IN all our large marine aquaria no object has been more popular than the octopus, or "devil fish," as it has been more emphatically called. The weird stories told of it by Victor Hugo, in his 'Toilers of the Sea,' had prepared the public mind for something so exceedingly ugly as to be unusually attractive; and accordingly the first specimen of a living octopus in the Crystal Palace Aquarium had to bear the uninterrupted gaze of lookers-on for weeks. It sat for its portrait in the illustrated papers, and had all its points noted down by newspaper correspondents with the same faithful detail as if they were those of prize cattle at the Agricultural Show. Brighton afterwards became possessed of one of these animals, and fortunately Mr. Henry Lee was there to study its habits, and to embody them in a series of papers which were collected into a volume not long ago on 'The Devil Fish of Fiction and of Fact.' This is the most interesting work on the cephalopoda we have in our language.

Since Victor Hugo so largely drew upon his vivid

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imagination in the description of his peculiar species of cuttlefish (or "cuddle"-fish, from the powers of embracing possessed by its long arms), portions of gigantic specimens have been found off the coasts of Newfoundland, and described in the scientific journals. These fragments indicate the actual, but fortunately rare, existence of cuttle-fishes nearly 30 feet in length, arms included. The old fishermen's stories of boats being sometimes enveloped by the arms of these huge "krakens,” have a semblance of truth. The common octopus (Octopus vulgaris) is now kept in all our marine aquaria. Its structure is very peculiar, for the water admitted into a special chamber for aerating purposes, can be so expelled as to subserve the purpose of locomotion. The animal usually crawls. along the sea-floor head downwards, moving about by means of its long tentacles. But when it wishes to move more rapidly, all these are drawn together in front of the head, the water is jerked out of the branchial chamber through a special funnel, and the cuttle-fish is thus driven backward by the rebound. The suckers on the tentacles are most formidable organs for retaining hold, each one being provided with a natural piston, so that a vacuum can be created when it is withdrawn at the will of the animal. The horny mandibles of the mouth are very much like those of the parrot, and by their means the-cuttle fishes can bite through the carapaces of the crabs, &c., on which they habitually feed. Although this species pos

sesses an ink-bag its contents are rarely poured forth; but when alarmed, the ink-bag is emptied suddenly, and the water is then so beclouded with the inky

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fluid that the cuttle-fish can make its secure escape whilst the water is disturbed. The octopus has the peculiar power of changing the tints of its skin, according to those of the ground it may be reposing

SEPIAS AND SQUIDS.

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upon; for its habits are not very active, and it will remain in the same position for hours, occasionally coiling and uncoiling one or another of its eight long sucker-clad feet or tentacles. A stock of live shore

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crabs (Carcinus manas) is usually kept in a separate tank for the purpose of feeding cuttles.

The common sepia (Sepia officinalis) is also kept under artificial marine conditions, but it is not so

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