In a specimen of the giant squid which I handled and measured, the long arms were about thirty feet in length. The ends were enlarged with paddlelike organs, and bore a group of suckers. The object of the long arms is to serve as graspers. They are kept near the body, coiled up, and can be shot out with remarkable velocity, grasping a fish like two hands with gigantic arms. They haul the prey to the short arms, when hundreds of sucking disks hold the victim that is now pressed to the remarkable mouth. This lies between the base of the arms, and in color and appearance is almost exactly like the beak of a parrot, with the exception that the under bill fits over the upper (Fig. 118). These bills almost invariably nip the struggling fish over the vertebra or back bone, severing it at once, and ending the struggle. The tongue of the squid is a ribbon with teeth upon it. Such an armament alone is sufficient to attract attention to the animal, but it has still another feature which adds to its interest as a weird and disagreeable creature. The squid has a siphon which terminates in a tube, opening beneath the head. Into this an ink bag opens (Fig. 119). In swimming, the squid rarely if ever rests upon the bottom, but takes in water around the edge of the mantle and ejects it with more or less force from the siphon, and thus the squid is driven along, tail foremost. When alarmed its movements are very rapid. If in danger, the squid pours an inky secretion, which is the sepia of commerce, into the siphon, and the secretion is swept out into the water in a cloud which spreads rapidly, to the confusion of any following enemy. [Illustration: FIG. 120.--Cuttlefish bone.] [Illustration: FIG. 121.--Eggs of the squid.] The squid has a shell, but it is very small, and internal. It is called the pen, and that of some species is the cuttlefish bone of commerce (Fig. 120). In specimens six or seven feet long, taken at Santa Catalina, California, the pen was fifteen inches long and glasslike--a perfect pen in shape. Such is this peculiar creature, and if we add that it can change its color from very dark brown to almost white, adapting it to the color of the bottom over which it rests, we can form some idea of one of the strangest of all animals. They deposit eggs in clusters.