for hours on the bottom, after a hearty meal, looking very much like a sleepy tortoise. The cuttle-fishes are so voracious that fishermen regard them as unwelcome visitors. Some localities on our own coasts are occasionally so infested by them that the drift-netting has to be abandoned, in consequence of their devouring the fish, or rendering them unsaleable by tearing them with their beaks as they hang in the meshes. The _Sepia_ seldom lives long in confinement. Although, like the calamaries, it often swims gently forward by the use of its side fins, its usual mode of rapid progress is the same as that of the octopus; namely, darting backwards by the ejection of a stream of water through the funnel. In a limited space, like an aquarium tank, there is not sufficient room for its rocket-like rush, and therefore its hinder extremities so frequently come in contact with the rock-work, that the skin is worn through until the edge of the internal shell, or “sepiostaire” is visible, and death follows. The animal cannot see behind it; and so it often happens that it similarly comes to grief in its natural habitat, especially in calm weather, when, as Edward Forbes says, “not a ripple breaks upon the pebbles to warn it that the shore is near. An enemy appears: the creature ejects its ink,[20] like a sharp-shooter discharging his rifle ere he retreats, and then, darting away, tail foremost, under cover of the cloud, grounds itself high upon the beach, and perishes there.” The following are the dimensions of a fine male _Sepia_ which I dissected at the Brighton Aquarium, July 3, 1875:— Diameter of body across the back and lateral fins 9½ in. Length of body, including marginal fin 12 ” ” head 3½ ” ” tentacles 21 ” ” shorter arms 6 ” ” sepiostaire, or “bone” 10¼ ”