194 THE OCTOPUS. 



comparable to the many-oared caique that glides 

 over the tranquil waters of the Bosporus; they 

 can ramble at will over the sandy roadways in- 

 tersecting their submarine parks, and, converting 

 arms into legs, march on like a huge spider. 

 Gymnasts of the highest order, they climb the 

 slippery ledges, as flies walk up a window- 

 pane ; attaching the countless suckers that arm 

 the terrible limbs to the face of the rocks, or 

 to the wrack and seaweed, they go about, back 

 downward, like marine sloths, or, clinging with 

 one arm to the waving alga?, perform series of 

 trapeze movements that Leotard might view 

 with envy. 



The size, of course, varies. I have seen and 

 measured the arm five feet long, and as large at 

 the base where it joins the central disc as my 

 wrist ; and were an octopus by any chance to 

 wind its sucker-dotted cable-arms round a luck- 

 less bather, fatal would be the embrace, and 

 horrible to imagine, being dragged down and 

 drowned by this eight-armed monster; a worse 

 death than being crushed by coiling serpents like 

 ill-fated Laocoon. 



I have often when on the rocks, in Esquimalt 

 Harbour, watched my friend's proceedings; the 

 water being clear and still, it is just like peering 



