196 THE OCTOPUS. 



fish, and suddenly knocked it senseless, so does 

 the arm of the octopus paralyse its victim ; then, 

 winding a great sucker-clad cable round the 

 palsied fish as an elephant winds its trunk 

 round anything to be conveyed to the mouth- 

 draws the dainty morsel to the centre of the 

 disc, where the beaked mouth seizes, and soon 

 sucks it in. 



I am perfectly sure, from frequent observa- 

 tion, the octopus has the power of numbing its 

 prey ; and the sucking-discs along each ray are 

 more for the purposes of climbing and holding- 

 on whilst fishing, than for capturing and detain- 

 ing slippery prisoners. The suckers are very 

 large, and arranged in triple rows along the 

 under-surface of the ray, decreasing in size to- 

 wards the point, and possessing wonderful powers 

 of adhesion. 



As illustrating the size of these suckers, I may 

 as well confess to a blunder I once made. It was 

 an extremely low tide, and I was far out on the 

 rocks at Esquimalt Harbour, hunting the pools, 

 when I saw what I fancied a huge actinia, as 

 big as an eggcup, its tentacles hauled in, and, 

 having detached its disc from the rocks, was 

 waiting for the tide: placing the fancied prize 

 safely in my collecting-box, to my disgust, on 



