United States or United States Virgin Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Cephalopoda have not yet been found lower than this group, but it will be observed that they occur here associated with genera of Trilobites considered by Barrande as characteristically Primordial, some of which belong to all the divisions of the British Cambrian about to be mentioned. This renders the absence of cephalopoda of less importance as bearing on the theory of development.
I do not think that, as of old, the vampires come to their prey installed in stolen bodies, but that they visit people wholly in spirit form, and, with their superphysical mouths, suck the brain cells dry of intellect. Idiots and epileptics are the cephalopoda of the land only, if anything, fouler, more voracious, and more insatiable than their aquatic prototypes. They never ought to be at large.
French fishermen give them the name "cuckoldfish," and they belong to the class Cephalopoda, family Dibranchiata, consisting of themselves together with cuttlefish and argonauts.
Even in the highest class of the Mollusca, the Cephalopoda or cuttle- fishes, in which the sexes are separate, secondary sexual characters of the present kind do not, as far as I can discover, occur.
Occasionally, too, their objections and criticisms are based upon errors of their own. As, for example, when Mr. Mivart and the Quarterly Reviewer insist upon the resemblances between the eyes of Cephalopoda and Vertebrata, quite forgetting that there are striking and altogether fundamental differences between them; or when the Quarterly Reviewer corrects Mr.
Nevertheless, seeing that there is nothing in nature at all like the chambered shell of the Belemnite, except the shells of the Nautilus and of the Spirula, it was legitimate to prophesy that the animal from which the fossil proceeded must have belonged to the group of the Cephalopoda.
For instance, among the mammalia the pachydermata, among the reptilia the salamander and newt, among the articulata the cephalopoda, are at present remarkably reduced; compare with the legions of ammonites and belemnites of the secondary period the small number of nautilus and cuttle-fish of the seas at the present day.
There is nothing like this in the vegetable world; but an exactly corresponding structure is met with in the shells of two kinds of existing animals, the pearly Nautilus and the Spirula, and only in them. These animals belong to the same division the Cephalopoda as the cuttle-fish, the squid, and the octopus.
An organ for vision must be formed of transparent tissue, and must include some sort of lens for throwing an image at the back of a darkened chamber. Beyond this superficial resemblance, there is hardly any real similarity between the eyes of cuttle-fish and vertebrates, as may be seen by consulting Hensen's admirable memoir on these organs in the Cephalopoda.
"Well," I said, "these are real devilfish caverns, and I wouldn't be surprised to see some of those monsters hereabouts." "What!" Conseil put in. "Squid, ordinary squid from the class Cephalopoda?" "No," I said, "devilfish of large dimensions. But friend Land is no doubt mistaken, because I don't see a thing." "That's regrettable," Conseil answered.
Word Of The Day