. Economic mollusca of Acadia . Habits. The Squid is easily recognized and is one of the best known of our Molluscs. It is the most highly organized of the group,, and in its appearance and most of its habits, resembles a fish rather than what it really is. The body is cylindrical, tapering to a point at the posterior end, and in front bears a head which has ten arms arranged in a ring around the mouth. These arms bear sucking disks on their inner sides, in the two longer near their extremities only, and in the other eight quite to their bases. The mouth is arm- ed with a stout horny beak simi
. Economic mollusca of Acadia . Habits. The Squid is easily recognized and is one of the best known of our Molluscs. It is the most highly organized of the group,, and in its appearance and most of its habits, resembles a fish rather than what it really is. The body is cylindrical, tapering to a point at the posterior end, and in front bears a head which has ten arms arranged in a ring around the mouth. These arms bear sucking disks on their inner sides, in the two longer near their extremities only, and in the other eight quite to their bases. The mouth is arm- ed with a stout horny beak similar to that of a parrot. The large and very bright eyes are on diametrically opposite sides of the head; they have lids and a round pupil. The neck is well marked, sharply separating the head from the body. On the under side of the latter, projecting forward, is a stout process with an opening at its apex which might be mistaken for a mouth. It is the opening of the tube or siphon by which water is drawn into and expelled from a sac inside the body, this being, as will be explained below, its locomotive apparatus, iit the posterior end, attached on the dorsal side, is the broad caudal fin which extends a little more than a third (about two-fifths) of the length of the body proper. It extends out laterally on each side of the latter and is shaped like the quad- rant of a circle, the arc being to the front and the two radii sloping to the extreme pos- Fig. I. terior end. An average specimen is fourteen inches in extreme length, the body proper being eight inches; length of fin about three inches; body one and one- half inches in diameter. In the interior on the back of the animal, and running the entire length of the body, is a translucent, horny pen-shaped structure, called the " ; This is in reality the shell, reduced and carried inward nstead of covering the out&ide of the animal. The color is variable in the extreme. The ground color is pale- bluish-white, a
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectmollusks, bookyear188
