Southern Calamary, Sepioteuthis australis

The enormous eyes of this Cuttlefish (as big as those of a calf in the specimen figured) roll about in their sockets in a way so suggestive of a vertebrate animal of the higher types, and give such an air of bright, energetic intelligence and activity to this fierce, predaceous creature, that it is difficult for an observer, unacquainted with its structure, to realise the fact of its belonging to so lowly a division of the animal kingdom as the Mollusca. It is one of the rarer Cuttlefishes of our Bay, the specimen described and figured having been obtained during the submarine blasting operations for removing rocks from the channels within the Heads, near Queenscliff.