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I N A G U A 



that it was a full second or two before I was conscious of what 

 I was watching. 



It was my first acquaintance with a live, full grown octopus. 

 The beast flowed down the remainder of the boulder, so closely 

 did its flesh adhere to the stone, and then slowly, with tentacles 

 spread slightly apart, slithered into a crevasse nearby. The 

 head of the octopus was about as big as a football, but as it 

 reached the fissure, which was not more than four inches in 

 width, it flattened out and wedged itself into the opening. It 

 seemed somewhat irritated at my disturbing it, for it rapidly 

 flushed from pebbled yellow to mottled brown and then back 

 to a livid white. It remained white for about twenty seconds 

 and then altered slowly to a dark gray edged with maroon. I 

 stood stock-still but it made no overt motions and I slowly 

 edged away. Quite possibly it might have been a nasty cus- 

 tomer, for the tentacles were about five feet from tip to tip. 



This last statement may seem a contradiction to my opening 

 paragraph; and, I must admit, that is the way I felt about the 

 octopus at the time. However, since that hour I have collected 

 and observed a number of these creatures, including the squids. 

 I have found them animals of unusual attainments and they 

 should be ranked among the most remarkable denizens of the 

 sea. They are endowed with considerable intelligence and they 

 have reached a system of living all their own which they have 

 maintained for approximately 500,000,000 years. As far back 

 as the Ordovician period of geology we find their ancestors, 

 and there is good evidence that at one time the forefathers of 

 the present octopi very nearly ruled the world. Had they been 

 able to pass the barrier of the edge of the ocean as the early 

 fish-derived amphibians did there might have been no limit 

 to the amazing forms which would have peopled the earth. 



Within the bounds of pure speculation, however, the fact 

 remains that the cephalopods, as the entire octopi-like group 



