16 OCTOPODIDZ. 
a large stone, or in the wide cleft of a rock, where an Octopus 
can creep and squeeze itself with the flatness of a sand-dab, or 
the slipperiness of an eel. Its modes of locomotion are curious 
and varied; using the eight arms as paddles, and working them 
alternately, the central disk representing a boat, octopi row 
themselves along with an ease and celerity comparable to the 
many-oared caique that glides over the tranquil waters of the 
Bosphorus ; they can ramble at will over the sandy roadways, 
intersecting their submarine parks, and converting arms into 
legs, march on like a huge spider. Gymnasts of the highest 
order, they climb the slippery ledges, as flies walk up a window- 
pane ; attaching the countless suckers that arm the terrible limbs 
to the face of the rocks, or to the wrack and sea-weed, they go 
about back downward, like marine sloths, or, clinging with one 
arm to the waving alow, perform series of trapeze movements 
that Leotard might view with envy. 
“T do not think, in its native element, an Octopus often catches 
prey on the ground or on the rocks, but waits for them just as 
the spider does, only the Octopus converts itself into a web, and 
a fearful one too. Fastening one arm to a stout stalk of the 
great sea-wrack, stiffening out the other seven, one would hardly 
know it from the wrack amongst which it is concealed. Patiently 
he bides his time, until presently a shoal of fish come gaily on. 
Two or three of them rub against the arms: fatal touch! As 
though a powerful electric shock had passed through the fish, 
and suddenly knocked it senseless, so does the arm of the Octopus 
paralyze its victim; then winding a great sucker-clad cable round 
the palsied fish, he draws the dainty morsel to the centre of the 
disk, where fle beaked mouth seizes, and soon sucks it in. 
‘““T am perfectly sure, from frequent observations, the Octopus 
has the power of numbing its prey ; and the sucking disks along 
ach ray are more for the purposes of climbing and holding 
on whilst fishing, than for capturing and detaining slippery 
prisoners, 
“The Indian looks upon the Octopus as an alderman does on 
turtle,and devours it with equal gusto and relish, only the savage 
roasts the glutinous carease instead of boiling it. His mode of 
catching octopi is crafty in the extreme, for redskin well knows, 
from past experience, that were the Octopus once to get some of 
its huge arms over the side of the canoe, and at the same time a 
holdfast on the wrack, it could as easily haul it over as a child 
could upset a basket. Paddling the canoe close to the rocks, and 
quietly pushing aside the wrack, the savage peers through the 
crystal water, until his practised eye detects an Octopus, with 
its great rope-like arms stiffened out, waiting patiently for food. 
His spear is twelve feet long, armed at the end with four pieces 
of hard wood, made harder by being baked and charred in the 
