50 THE OCTOPUS, 



This reparative power is possessed by some other animals, of 

 which the starfishes and Crustacea are the most familiar instances. 

 The lobster and the crab, if they find themselves in depressing 

 circumstances, are addicted to malingering. They do not go so 

 far as to commit suicide ; but, stopping short of that, perpetrate a 

 kind of demi-semi-self-immolation. In a sudden passion of fear or 

 anger, they will sometimes fling off one or both of their large 

 claws, and that which they thus do impulsively and in haste, they 

 repent and repair at leisure — like the intemperate man we some- 

 times read of in the police news, who goes home and smashes 

 the crockery, and, when he is able to reflect on his folly, is glad 

 to make good the damage as quickly and as quietly as he can. 



The starfishes, too, as the common " five-finger " ( Uraster), and 

 the brittle-star {Ophiocoma), — which by-the-by,is not half as brittle 

 as has been supposed— can throw off their limbs in a pet, and grow 

 them again. But in both of these the act is voluntary, and the 

 dismemberment complete. If the claw of a lobster or crab be 

 severed, or wounded in any part of its length, the animal will 

 bleed, and waste, and die of the consequent exhaustion. I have 

 noticed that, especially in the spiny lobster or sea cray-fish {Pali- 

 mirus)^ the blood flows freely many hours after death, and that 

 when I have had occasion to remove the abdominal and caudal 

 leaf-like appendages of a dead crayfish for dissection and micro- 

 scopical examination, the blood and serum have poured from the 

 part where the cut has been made, and thickened on the stone 

 slab in a firm, gelatinous sheet, of the colour and consistency of 

 guava jelly. 



The only joint from which new growth can start in the Crustacea 

 is that connected with the body. The whole limb must be got 

 rid of. The octopus, on the contrary, is incapable of voluntary 

 dismemberment, but has the faculty of reproducing, as an out- 

 growth from the old stump, any portion of an arm (or \q^ which 

 may have been lost by misadventure. I say " arm or leg," for one 

 hardly knows which these eight appendages should be called. If 



