24 THE OCTOPUS. 



front glass, instead of against the rockwork. Our next endeavour 

 was successful. A second crab was so fastened that the string 

 could be withdrawn if desired, and was lowered near to a great 

 male octopus, who generally dwelt in a nook in the west front 

 corner of the tank. He was sleepy, and not very hungry, and 

 required a great deal of tempting to rouse him to activity ; but 

 the sight of his favourite food overcame his laziness, and, after 

 some demonstrative panting, puffing, and erection of his tubercles, 

 he lunged out an arm to seize the precious morsel. It was with- 

 drawn from his reach ; and so, at last, he turned out of bed, 

 rushed at it, and got it under him against the plate-glass, just as I 

 desired. In a second the crab was completely pinioned. Not a 

 movement, not a struggle was visible or possible : each leg, each 

 claw, was grasped all over by suckers — enfolded in them — stretched 

 out to its full extent by them. The back of the carapace was 

 covered all over with the tenacious vacuum-discs, brought together 

 by the adaptable contraction of the limb, and ranged in close 

 order, shoulder to shoulder, touching each other ; whilst, between 

 those which dragged the abdominal plates towards the mouth, the 

 black tip of the hard, horny beak was seen for a single instant 

 protruding from the circular orifice in the centre of the radiation 

 of the arms, and, the next, had crunched through the shell, and 

 was buried deep in the flesh of the victim. 



The action of an octopus when seizing its prey for its necessary 

 food is very like that of a cat pouncing on a mouse, and holding 

 it down beneath its paws. The movement is as sudden, the scuffle 

 as brief, and the escape of the prisoner even less probable. The 

 fate of the crab is not, really, more terrible than that of the mouse, 

 or of a minnow swallowed by a perch ; but there is a repulsive- 

 ness about the form, colour, and attitudes of its captor which 

 invests it with a kind of tragic horror. 



In the next chapter the author writes : — 



" To believe in the existence of the pieiivre one must have seen it. Compared 

 to it the ancient hydras were insignificant. Orpheus, Homer, and Hesiod 



