32 THE OCTOPUS. 



doubt, be impressive if it were not incomprehensible. It reminds 

 one of Mr. Maccabe's " Welsh sermon," which, delivered with 

 solemn earnestness, rolls forth in grandly sonorous tones, but has 

 not a word of Welsh or sense in it ; or of the " nonsense-problem " 

 which Mark Twain says was propounded to him by Artemus 

 Ward, and which seemed so full of thought and so clearly put that 

 he blamed his *' wooden head " because he got into a hopeless 

 tangle over it, until he found he had been entrapped into ponder- 

 ing over " a string of plausibly worded sentences that did not 

 mean anything under the sun." 



Let us now take evidence concerning the dimensions to which 

 the octopus is known to attain, and the degree in which it may be 

 regarded as dangerous to man. 



An octopus from our own coasts having arms two feet in 

 length may be considered a rather large specimen; and Dr. 

 J. E. Gray, who was always most kindly ready to place at the 

 disposal of any sincere inquirer the vast store of knowledge laid 

 up in his wonderful memory, told me that " there is not one in 

 the British museum which exceeds this size, or which would 

 not go into a quart pot, body, arms and all." The largest British 

 specimen I have hitherto seen had arms 2 ft. 6 in. long. 



If, however, the octopus seldom or never arrives at a length of 

 arm of three feet on the northern coasts of France, we have suffi- 

 cient evidence that it exceeds it on her southern borders, and 

 along the Spanish and Italian shores of the Mediterranean. 



M. Verany, of Nice, an able naturalist, mentions having seen 

 an octopus which weighed -^t^ lbs. and measured three metres 

 from tip to tip of its outstretched arms. This would make the 

 length of each arm about four-and-a-half feet. A fisherman 

 who noticed it affixed to the mole of the port of Nice had the 

 hardihood to grasp it with his hands, and made himself master 

 of it, though not without much difficulty. 



Mr. Sylvanus Hanley, the well-known conchologist, and joint 

 author with Professor Edward Forbes of their standard work 



