United States or South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"When in danger, cuttle-fish are said to eject a copious black liquor through their funnel or excrementary canal, as a means of obscuring the circumfluent water, and concealing themselves from all foes: "Long as the craftie cuttle lieth sure In the blacke cloud of his thicke vomiture."
He devours very large fish, even sharks, but his principal food seems to be cuttle-fish and squids, some of them of as great bulk as himself. These cuttle-fish's tentacle discs are as big as soup-plates, and surrounded by hooks as large and sharp as tiger claws; while their mouths are armed with a parrot-like beak capable of rending anything held to them by the tentacles.
"Judge Douglas is playing cuttle-fish," remarked Lincoln, noting with satisfaction the very evident discomfiture of his opponent, "a small species of fish that has no mode of defending itself when pursued except by throwing out a black fluid, which makes the water so dark the enemy cannot see it, and thus it escapes."
There were gold covers for buttons, and every one was molded into some beautiful design of crest or circle or flower or cuttle-fish. And among them lay the bones of three persons. Across the forehead of one was a diadem of gold, worked into designs of flowers. "See!" cried Schliemann, "these are queens. See their crowns, their scepters." For near the hands lay golden scepters, with crystal balls.
They are "complementary"; one is the reflection, as in a mirror, of the other. Why the narwhal's tooth does not conform to this rule is a mystery. It is a remarkable fact that only a few whales and porpoises eat fish or the flesh of other whales. The large toothed-whales, including the cachalot or sperm whale, and also the Ziphius-like beaked whales, live upon cuttle-fish.
This, as I take it, is in some true sense the basis of all moral greatness that a man should have a grip which cannot be loosened, like that of the cuttle-fish with all its tentacles round its prey, upon the truths that dominate his being and make him a hero.
She had not lost any time in setting about making that collection of shells which she had mentioned to him in confidence when coming down in the train it was her intention to begin as soon as she got to the sea; and, all the time he had been speaking of the little crabs and other things, she had been busily gathering together all sorts of razor shells, pieces of cuttle-fish bone, cast-off lobsters' claws, and bits of seaweed, which she now proudly drew his attention to, expecting the old sailor's admiration.
"The nigger won't let go, sir," shouted the master-at-arms, Ned Lizard, "unless we cut off his hands and feet might as well try to haul a cuttle-fish from a rock without leaving its feelers behind it."
The most remarkable feature about the sperm whale is the bluntness of its clumsy head, which looks somewhat like a big log with the end sawn square off, and this head is about one-third of its entire body. The sperm whale feeds differently from the right whale. He seizes his prey with his powerful teeth, and lives, to a great extent, on large cuttle-fish.
It was at once evident that it was a massive fragment of cuttle-fish tentacle or arm as thick as a stout man's body, and with six or seven sucking-discs or ACETABULA on it. These were about as large as a saucer, and on their inner edge were thickly set with hooks or claws all round the rim, sharp as needles, and almost the shape and size of a tiger's.
Word Of The Day