80 A SFX'OND MEDLEY. 



giving it a very peculiar, and, (if I may use the expression,) Bulloea-like 

 appearance. 



Concealed beneath stones we found two individuals of Octopus vulgaris, 

 or Common Poulpe, called by the fishermen "blood- suckers;" they seek 

 them for bait for congers; and strange tales are told of narrow escapes 

 from death by those who, having incautiously inserted their hands beneath 

 rocks, in quest of the bait, have been detained by the arms and sucking- 

 disks of the Octopus, until their cries have drawn assistance barely in time 

 to rescue them from the returning tide. 



The whereabouts of these Octopi was revealed to us by the heaps of 

 shells at the mouth of their burrow, whose owners had furnished a meal 

 to the rapacious Ogre within. When drawn out of their place of con- 

 cealment, they shuffled about in a strange awkward fashion with their long 

 arms, and rolled their great eyes in a very hideous and distracted manner. 

 Pliny has a great deal to say concerning these Polypi, as he calls the 

 Cuttle-fish tribe, in the Ninth Book of his Natural History, chap, xxix., 

 from which I extract the following account, taken from the quaint trans- 

 lation by Philemon Holland, as bearing especially upon what I have just 

 related : — 



"Of all soft fishes they only go out of the water to dry land, especially 

 into some rough place, for they cannot abide those that are plaine and 

 even. They live upon Shel-fishes, and with their haires or strings that 

 they have, they will twine about their shels and crack them to pieces; 

 wherefore a man may know where they lie and make their abode, by a 

 number of shels that lie before their nest. And albeit otherwise it be a 

 very brutish and senslesse creature, so foolish withall, that it will swim 

 and come to a man's hand; yet it seems, after a sort, to be witty and 

 wise, keeping a house and maintaining a familie; for all that they can 

 take they carry home to their nest. When they have eaten the meat of 

 the fishes, they throw the empty shels out of dores, and lie, as it were, 

 in ambuscado behind, to watch and catch fishes that swim me thither." 



(To be continued.) 



A SECOND MEDLEY. 



Worm Pipe Fish, {Syngnathus anguineus.) — This fish was rather plen- 

 tiful here during autumn. I received the first specimen on the 8th. of 

 September; since that time I have obtained as good as a dozen. The 

 longest measures eleven inches and a half. The colours vary from a pale 

 olive green to a very dark green; in a few it was almost black. When at 



