THE DEVIL-FISH OF FICTION AND OF FACT 25 



imagined only the chimaera : — Providence created the devil-fish. If terror was 

 the object of its creation, it is perfection. 



" The ' pieuvre ' has no 7nuscular organisation, no menacing cry, no breast- 

 plate, no horn, no dart, no tail with which to hold or bruise, no cutting fins, 

 or wings with claws, no prickles, no sword, no electric discharge, no venom, 



no talons, no beak^ no teeth It has no bones, no blood, no flesh. It is 



soft and flabby. // is an empty flask ; a skin zoith nothing inside it. Its eight 

 tentacles may be turned inside out, like the flngers of a glove. It has a single 

 orifice, which is both vent and ?no2ith. The same opening performs both functions^ 



So says the novelist. The naturalist knows that it has a com- 

 plete and perfect muscular organisation ; muscles which serve to 

 retract and depress the funnel, bundles of strong muscles passing 

 along the arms and branching to each of the suckers, within 

 which QiYitx fasciculi of muscular fibres converge from the circum- 

 ference to the centre, and by their contraction produce the vacuum 

 which gives to the animal its power of adhesion, — muscles all over 

 its body, and a mass of muscles of such strength to work the 

 powerful beak, that if anyone, believing the 

 fiction ist, were to place his finger in the small 

 circular orifice in the centre of the base of 

 the arms, he would possibly learn practically 

 that it is not ''an empty flask with nothing in 

 it." A sharp nip might perhaps teach him 

 that it has not only muscles, but a mouth and 

 head also. For just within the oral cavity 

 lie, retracted and hidden, but ready for use 

 when wanted, a pair of horny mandibles 

 which bite vertically, like the beak of a parrot 

 or turtle, except that the lower mandible is 

 the longest and overlaps the upper, and are 

 so hard that they can not only tear the softer 

 animals the octopus is able to catch, but also 

 break up the shells of lobsters, crabs, and mussels, which are 

 its usual food. The head contains a brain, from which arises 

 the system of nerves ; and the animal has a sense of smell, 



Fig. 3. Mandibles of 



Octopus. 



{p. vulgaris). 



