THE OCTOPUS OUT OF WATER. 45 



M. Moquin Tandon, in his "World of the Sea," alluding to 

 the peril to swimmers of contact with the octopus, gives a singular 

 recipe for rendering the creature harmless. He says : " Dr. 

 Franklin found that a few drops of vinegar on its back at once 

 persuaded it to release its hold." So, too, would a red-hot poker, 

 no doubt ; and it would be almost as easy to apply the one as the 

 other under water : for, supposing that swimmers were in the 

 habit of carrying cruet bottles slung round their necks, con- 

 siderable ingenuity would be required to enable one to pour a 

 few drops of vinegar on the back of an octopus which was holding 

 him by the ancle at some distance below the surface. To put 

 vinegar on an octopus, as to put salt on a bird's tail, you must 

 first catch it. I have somewhere read of a Dutch pedlar who sold 

 a man a liquid for the extermination of fleas. "And how do you 

 use it?" inquired his customer. "Ketch te flea, and drop von 

 little drop into his mout," answered the pedlar. "Why!" ex- 

 claimed the purchaser, " I could kill it in half the time, by crush- 

 ing it." "Veil," said the Dutchman, thoughtfully, "dat is a goot 

 vay, too." 



In August, 1873, I received from Dr. R. Brisco Owen, of 

 Haulfre, Beaumaris, a fellow of the Linnean Society since 1824, 

 the following communication respecting octopods quitting the 

 water, and their capability of rapid progress on land :— 



" I fonvard you a description of a curious species of octopod 

 which I once met with in Torres Straits; but at the Brighton 

 Aquarium, last month, I was examining the octopus there, and 

 they struck me as being quite a different species to mine, their 

 eyes especially different ; the eyes of mine were full and open, 

 as beautiful as the eye of the owl, which they resembled.* It was 

 in the month of September, 1843, that I landed in Blackwood's 

 Bay, on my passage through Torres Straits from Sydney to 

 Madras. The ship on board of which I was a passenger was the 

 Straiheden, Captain Howlett. On casting anchor in the bay, 

 having cleared this most dangerous strait, which separates the 



