THE COMMON SQUIDS - FAMILY LOLIGINIDIE. Genus LOLIGO, Lam. Body long; fins present, variable in size; tentacles partially retractile; pen as long as the back, slender, chitinous, feathered posteriorly, pointed in front, keeled below. Distribution world wide.
Habitat.— Atlantic coast from Maine to South Carolina.
My first acquaintance with the squid was made in China town in New York. Shapeless objects of fish and flesh hung about the delicatessen shops. Dried squids were hung among the rest, and quite as repulsive-looking as the worst of them. "Enough to make a vegetarian of you for the rest of your life!" At Woods Holl, a year later, I met our common squid alive in his native element. That I, should have judged this graceful beautiful creature by the mummy of an Oriental species to which the "Heathen Chinee" had done his worst is scarcely worthy of me.
There were a great many little squids under two inches long in a floating wooden tank by the wharf and they kept together, moved by quick darts or quietly in sweeping curves — always as if one impulse controlled them all. They were like little soft 452 The Common Squids lumps of clear, gleaming semi-fluid jelly. The eyes a brilliant green, and the skin freckled over with spots of red, which be came much deeper when the creature was handled. A dozen were obtained with difficulty by sweeps of a dip net for study in the laboratory aquarium. Here they not only blushed when disturbed, but spouted black ink in quantities corresponding to their sizes.
Specimens a foot long are interesting tenants of an aqua rium. Poke the placid cephalopod with a stick and he blushes all over with freckles of pale red. Now he shrinks behind a gray stone, and his ruddy colour has turned to gray. Or sinking to the sandy floor of the tank he may seem to flow over the surface, a yellowish mass, scarcely visible.
The reason for these chameleon changes has been discovered. The skin has several series of pigment spots, globular in shape, each enclosed in a membrane, which is supplied with a double set of muscles, and nerves connecting all with central ganglia which control them. Each speck of pigment is flattened into
quite a large patch of colour by the contraction of the muscles attached to its equator — all pulling outward at the same time. When the red spots are called out, the gray and other sets are inactive, and the squid blushes violently. This is the usual colour exhibited in the aquarium.
The capture of food is the work of the horny, cup-shaped disks that crowd the inner faces of the arms and the clubs of the tentacles. In the bottom of the cup is a flat piston on a stout rod of muscle. When the disk is applied to any object the mus cular lips and saw-toothed cartilage make an air-tight contact, for the piston is raised, forming a vacuum against which the air outside presses powerfully. These sucking disks are attached to the arms by flexible stalks. An object seized is at once held by as many of these suckers as can get hold. The arms bend and shorten to bring the prey to the mouth, the lips fall back, the beak rises up and tears the object into pieces, bolting them as large as possible.
In the breeding season the fourth arm of the left side be comes hectocotylised at the tip in the adult males. The suckers in part are replaced by papillae. The spermatophores are car ried in this arm from the time they are formed until time for fertilising the ova. A single female is said to produce forty 453 The Common Squids thousand eggs at once. A large proportion of squids are de voured in infancy by fishes of all ages, else over-population by squids must certainly occur.
Eating squids is not an Anglo-Saxon habit. We leave that to foreigners of very undiscriminating tastes — the Chinese coolie and the poorer classes along the Mediterranean coasts. Never theless, there is a small but growing class of squid-eaters among scientists well acquainted with the creature.
The squids are first drawn, to remove all the visceral organs and the eyes. They are then steamed until the cartilage of the suckers is tender. Salt, pepper and butter is the seasoning pre ferred. The experiment has proved a success. Squids are declared good to eat. But a bit of dialogue that followed a squid supper, goes to prove that scientists are human.
"You were at the Fish Commission last night. What do you think of squid as food?" "It was excellent ; I enjoyed it thoroughly. But I shall never taste it again." "Why? Did n't it agree with you?" "Perfectly. But — it is squid! It is the idea of it that dis agrees with me." The Tahiti fisherman has a more logical mind. He is pleased when he catches a squid. " Indeed," he argues, "what can be unclean that comes out of the sea?" 454