294 SUPPLEMENT 
of the sepiz, the young ones are in possession of all their 
faculties on issuing forth from the egg. 
We are not precisely acquainted with the duration of the 
life of the octopi. Aristotle says in a general manner that it 
is not long, and that the major part of them only live two 
years ; that then they grow soft, become decomposed, and are, 
as it were, annihilated. But it seems by no means probable 
that an octopus, whose egg is of such small dimensions, can, 
in two years, attain to the size at which it eventually arrives. 
As for the reason which lian assigns for this shortness of 
life, namely, the exhaustion occasioned in the male by sexual 
intercourse, and the number of births in the female, it lends 
but little support to the pretended fact. 
It appears nearly certain that the octopi remain concealed 
during the winter; the fishermen never meet with them 
during this season. The ancients tell us that this hyberna- 
tion lasts two months; how then is it possible that the 
winter can be the period of their sexual intercourse ? 
We are ignorant respecting the full size to which the octopi 
may attain. We find in the recitals of certain travellers, and 
even of some naturalists, that a species exists to which the 
name of kraken has been given, which arrives at an immea- 
surable bulk, so as to resemble an island when it approaches 
to the surface of the water, and to overset the largest vessel 
under full sail when it becomes entangled in their cordage. 
But we may be assured, without any fear of deceiving our- 
selves, that this is but an exaggeration of what has been said 
by the ancients, especially Pliny, concerning an octopus, which, 
according to Trebius, had a head of the size of a barrel con- 
taining fifteen amphorz, and whose tentacular appendages, 
which, as well as the head, were presented to Lucullus, were 
thirty feet im length, knotted like clubs, and so thick that 
a man could scarcely embrace them round; the suckers re- 
sembled basins,‘and the teeth were proportional. All that 
