[Illustration: Fig. 9. The common Squid (_Loligo vulgaris_) and its internal horny shell, or “pen.”] These “little squids” are impudently voracious. I have seen one in single combat with a young dog-fish about four inches long. At first I thought the fish was the aggressor, and had seized one of the tentacular arms of the little _Loligo_ as a good substitute for a worm; but it was soon apparent that the affray had been provoked by the carnivorous cephalopod, and that the puppy-fish would get the worst of it;—so they were separated. The common squid (_Loligo vulgaris_) is sometimes met with by the trawlers off Brighton, and brought to the Aquarium in considerable numbers. On the Sussex coast this species does not appear to assemble in very large brigades, but rather in small companies. No adult individuals have been received. They are all “youths in their teens,” not full-grown squids; to which they bear the same proportion in size as a drum-and-fife-band of boys to a regiment of stalwart soldiers. The largest English calamary I have seen, though larger specimens have been cast ashore on the west coast of Ireland, is one which my friend Dr. Bowerbank kindly sent to me, of a species comparatively rarely found in British home-waters,—_Ommastrephes sagittatus_. Its dimensions were as follows:— Length from front of head to point of tail, 21½ inches. Circumference of body, 14 inches. Greatest breadth across tail-fins, 14 inches. Length of each tentacular arm, 28 inches. Length of spread from tip to tip of the two tentacular arms, 4 feet 10 inches. It was taken in the mackerel nets, and brought into Hastings by one of the fishing boats on the 26th of September, 1873. Unfortunately it had been much bruised and knocked about by its captors. On endeavouring to extract the internal horny shell, _gladius_, or “pen,” which Mr. Gwyn Jeffreys well describes as resembling a very long oar with a broad handle, I found that it had been sadly smashed and broken across into many pieces. Fishermen often handle very roughly animals taken in their nets which have no value as marketable food, and this splendid squid had probably been dashed down on the deck of the boat with great violence. A pretence of some pains having been taken to keep it alive was, I am told, afterwards made. Although the “sagittated calamary” is uncommon on our own shores, it visits annually the coasts of Newfoundland in vast shoals, and is the species to which I have referred in another chapter, as being one of the staple baits used in the cod-fishery of that country.[21] [Illustration: Fig. 10. Eggs of the common Cuttle-fish (_Sepia officinalis_).]