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Molluscs, after pairing and copulation, lay a white spawn; and this spawn, as in the case of the testacean, gets granular in time. The octopus discharges into its hole, or into a potsherd or into any similar cavity, a structure resembling the tendrils of a young vine or the fruit of the white poplar, as has been previously observed. The eggs, when the female has laid them, are clustered round the sides of the hole. They are so numerous that, if they be removed they suffice to fill a vessel much larger than the animal's body in which they were contained. Some fifty days later, the eggs burst and the little polypuses creep out, like little spiders, in great numbers; the characteristic form of their limbs is not yet to be discerned in detail, but their general outline is clear enough. And, by the way, they are so small and helpless that the greater number perish; it is a fact that they have been seen so extremely minute as to be absolutely without organization, but nevertheless when touched they moved. The eggs of the sepia look like big black myrtle-berries, and they are linked all together like a bunch of grapes, clustered round a centre, and are not easily sundered from one another: for the male exudes over them some moist glairy stuff, which constitutes the sticky gum. These eggs increase in size; and they are white at the outset, but black and larger after the sprinkling of the male seminal fluid.

When it has come into being the young sepia is first distinctly formed inside out of the white substance, and when the egg bursts it comes out. The inner part is formed as soon as the female lays the egg, something like a hail-stone; and out of this substance the young sepia grows by a head-attachment, just as young birds grow by a belly-attachment. What is the exact nature of the navel-attachment has not yet been observed, except that as the young sepia grows the white substance grows less and less in size, and at length, as happens with the yolk in the case of birds, the white substance in the case of the young sepia disappears. In the case of the young sepia, as in the case of the young of most animals, the eyes at first seem very large. To illustrate this by way of a figure, let A represent the ovum, B and C the eyes, and D the sepidium, or body of the little sepia. (See diagram.)

The female sepia goes pregnant in the spring-time, and lays its eggs after fifteen days of gestation; after the eggs are laid there comes in another fifteen days something like a bunch of grapes, and at the bursting of these the young sepiae issue forth. But if, when the young ones are fully formed, you sever the outer covering a moment too soon, the young creatures eject excrement, and their colour changes from white to red in their alarm.

Crustaceans, then, hatch their eggs by brooding over them as they carry them about beneath their bodies; but the octopus, the sepia, and the like hatch their eggs without stirring from the spot where they may have laid them, and this statement is particularly applicable to the sepia; in fact, the nest of the female sepia is often seen exposed to view close in to shore. The female octopus at times sits brooding over her eggs, and at other times squats in front of her hole, stretching out her tentacles on guard.

The sepia lays her spawn near to land in the neighbourhood of sea-weed or reeds or any off-sweepings such as brushwood, twigs, or stones; and fishermen place heaps of faggots here and there on purpose, and on to such heaps the female deposits a long continuous roe in shape like a vine tendril. It lays or spirts out the spawn with an effort, as though there were difficulty in the process. The female calamary spawns at sea; and it emits the spawn, as does the sepia, in the mass.

The calamary and the cuttle-fish are short-lived, as, with few exceptions, they never see the year out; and the same statement is applicable to the octopus.

From one single egg comes one single sepia; and this is likewise true of the young calamary.

The male calamary differs from the female; for if its gill-region be dilated and examined there are found two red formations resembling breasts, with which the male is unprovided. In the sepia, apart from this distinction in the sexes, the male, as has been stated, is more mottled than the female.