Page - 1031 - in The Complete Aristotle

encircling fin goes all round the trunk, whereas it is in part lacking in the teuthis; both animals are pelagic. In all cases the head comes after the feet, in the middle of the feet that are called arms or feelers. There is here situated a mouth, and two teeth in the mouth; and above these two large eyes, and betwixt the eyes a small cartilage enclosing a small brain; and within the mouth it has a minute organ of a fleshy nature, and this it uses as a tongue, for no other tongue does it possess. Next after this, on the outside, is what looks like a sac; the flesh of which it is made is divisible, not in long straight strips, but in annular flakes; and all molluscs have a cuticle around this flesh. Next after or at the back of the mouth comes a long and narrow oesophagus, and close after that a crop or craw, large and spherical, like that of a bird; then comes the stomach, like the fourth stomach in ruminants; and the shape of it resembles the spiral convolution in the trumpet-shell; from the stomach there goes back again, in the direction of the mouth, thin gut, and the gut is thicker than the oesophagus. (See diagram.) Molluscs have no viscera, but they have what is called a mytis, and on it a vessel containing a thick black juice; in the sepia or cuttle-fish this vessel is the largest, and this juice is most abundant. All molluscs, when frightened, discharge such a juice, but the discharge is most copious in the cuttle-fish. The mytis, then, is situated under the mouth, and the oesophagus runs through it; and down below at the point to which the gut extends is the vesicle of the black juice, and the animal has the vesicle and the gut enveloped in one and the same membrane, and by the same membrane, same orifice discharges both the black juice and the residuum. The animals have also certain hair-like or furry growths in their bodies. In the sepia, the teuthis, and the teuthus the hard parts are within, towards the back of the body; those parts are called in one the sepium, and in the other the ‘sword’. They differ from one another, for the sepium in the cuttle-fish and teuthus is hard and flat, being a substance intermediate between bone and fishbone, with (in part) a crumbling, spongy texture, but in the teuthis the part is thin and somewhat gristly. These parts differ from one another in shape, as do also the bodies of the animals. The octopus has nothing hard of this kind in its interior, but it has a gristly substance round the head, which, if the animal grows old, becomes hard. The females differ from the males. The males have a duct in under the oesophagus, extending from the mantle-cavity to the lower portion of the sac, and there is an organ to which it attaches, resembling a breast; (see diagram) in the female there are two of these organs, situated higher up; (see diagram) with both sexes there are underneath these organs certain red formations. The 1031