ployment, however, of not a few brains of
a considerably higher order. I next laid open the huge eyes. They were
curious organs, more simple in their structure than those of the true
fishes, but admirably adapted, I doubt not, for the purposes of seeing.
A camera obscura may be described as consisting of two parts--a lens in
front, and a darkened chamber behind; but in the eyes of fishes, as in
the brute and human eye, we find a third part added: there is a lens in
the middle, a darkened chamber behind, and a lighted chamber, or rather
vestibule, in front. Now, this lighted vestibule--the cornea--is
wanting in the eye of the cuttle-fish. The lens is placed in front, and
the darkened chamber behind. The construction of the organ is that of a
common camera obscura. I found something worthy of remark, too, on the
peculiar style in which the chamber is darkened. In the higher animals
it may be described as a chamber hung with black velvet--the _pigmentum
nigrum_ which covers it is of the deepest black; but in the cuttle-fish
it is a chamber hung with velvet, not of a black, but of a dark purple
hue--the _pigmentum nigrum_ is of a purplish red colour. There is
something interesting in marking this first departure from an invariable
condition of eyes of the more perfect structure, and in then tracing the
peculiarity downwards through almost every shade of colour, to the
emerald-like eye-specks of the pecten, and the still more rudimentary
red eye-specks of the star-fish. After examining the eyes, I next laid
open, in all its length, from the neck to the point of the sack, the
dorsal bone of the creature--its internal shell, I should rather say,
for bone it has none. The form of the shell in this species is that of a
feather, equally developed in the web on both sides. It gives rigidity
to the body, and furnishes the muscles with a fulcrum; and we find it
composed, like all other _shells_, of a mixture of animal matter and
carbonate of lime. Such was the lesson taught me in a single walk; and I
have recorded it at some length. The subject of it, the loligo, has been
described by some of our more distinguished naturalists, such as Kirby
in his Bridgewater Treatise, as "one of the most wonderful works of the
Creator;" and the reader will perhaps remember how fraught with
importance to natural science an incident similar to the one related
proved in the life of the youthful Cuvier. It was when passing his
twenty-second year on the