THE SINISTER GEPHALOPODS 



Miner put the box into the bottom of the dinghy which 

 he was using, and went on with his work, collecting 

 specimens. When he landed, he picked up the cigar-box, 

 which was still securely tied, and prized open the lid, 

 to show the octopus to his companion. The box was 

 empty. 



Miner said later that he felt he had been tricked by 

 some piece of parlour magic, or that a miracle of some 

 kind had happened. But as he stood there, completely 

 baffled. Miner looked down into the boat, and there 

 among the bilge water was the octopus, looking up at 

 them with its almost human eyes, from under the blade 

 of an oar. They quickly recaptured it. The extraordinary 

 creature had inserted the sensitive tips of its arms into 

 the thin crack along one edge of the cigar box below the 

 lid, and — getting a purchase by gripping the outside of 

 the box — had, in Miner's own words — ''pulled its rubber- 

 like body through the crack by flattening it to the thinness of 

 paper:' 



The account of this extraordinary incident might seem 

 incredible if related by anyone else, but Miner's reputa- 

 tion as a competent researcher in natural history pheno- 

 mena compels belief: and there are other incidents which 

 provide confirmatory evidence of this remarkable com- 

 pressibility of the octopus. 



Frank Lane records the experience of C. W. Goates, of 

 the New York Zoological Society in this connection. 

 Coates sent ten small octopuses to New York in cigar 

 boxes — received from a collector for the Society in Key 

 West. What happened makes it abundantly clear that 

 the octopus definitely possesses the extraordinary power 

 indicated in Miner's account. Quarter-inch holes were 

 drilled in the ten cigar boxes, and each box was tightly 

 bound with fish-line before they were placed in the 

 shipping tank. The fish-lines tightened in the water — the 

 boxes were submerged in the tank — and when they were 

 tested afterwards it was found absolutely impossible to 



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