144 OCTOPID.E. 



be the only modern naturalist who has adopted that 

 name. 



Octopus vulga'ris*, Lamarck. 



0. vulgaris, Lam. Mem. Soc. H. N. p. 18 ; F. & H. iv. p. 209, pi. NNN. 



f. 2. 



Body of a dusky hue, purplish-brown, reddish -yellow, or 

 grey variegated with white ; the back is covered with orange 

 and brown spots or chromatophores, and the whole surface 

 with countless minute purplish specks • the back is also more 

 or less tuberculous or warty : funnel wide : head not large in 

 proportion to the rest of the body : eyes globular and promi- 

 nent : arms stout, very long, gradually tapering to a fine point, 

 equidistant, but unequal, the dorsal pair being the smallest : 

 suckers extending the whole of the underside, diminishing in 

 size to the extremities of the arms; I counted 2112 in one 

 specimen ; the intermediate web is thick, and forms a crest on 

 one side of each arm. L. (exc. brach.) 6 ; br. 24. B. 2. 



Habitat : Laminarian zone on the southern coasts 

 of England ; Liverpool (Collingwood) ; dredged in Lam- 

 lash Bay, N. B. (Wyville Thomson); Firth of Forth 

 (Grant); Irish coasts, "not uncommon" (Templeton, 

 fide Thompson). But Eledone cirrosa may have been in 

 many cases mistaken for this species. 0. vulgaris 

 occurs all along the northern and north-western coasts 

 of France, and in the Mediterranean and Adriatic; 

 Canaries (Verany) ; ? Haiti, Cuba, Bahia, Mauritius, 

 Indian Ocean, and Red Sea (D'Orbigny). 



I have represented it in the frontispiece of this volume 

 as the " pieuvre " of the French, patiently watching for 

 its prey, with its cold grey merciless eyes and its almost 

 fiendish expression. Its anatomy was given by Cuvier 

 in his usual felicitous style. Mr. J. F. Marshall fully 

 confirms the observation made by Aristotle that it feeds 

 chiefly on bivalves. The heaps of shells round their 



* Common. 



