54 THE OCTOPUS. 



there for some time, these old habitues made a fierce onslaught on 

 it, and the new-comer had one of its arms torn away. It would 

 certainly have been killed if one of the attendants had not rescued 

 and removed it. Aristotle says that the octopus does not eat its 

 congeners, and D'Orbigny endorses his opinion. Nevertheless one 

 instance of this cannibalism has occurred in the Brighton Aquarium ; 

 and in that on the Boulevard Montmartre, Paris, in 1867, two 

 octopuses fought and the victor devoured the vanquished. 



Another reparation or renewal by the octopods of worn or in- 

 jured portions of their limbs is the frequent shedding of the outer 

 skins of their suckers, the epidermis of the flat surface of them, 

 by which they adhere, and travel from place to place. These 

 cast-off skins may generally be seen floating in the water in their 

 tanks in the form of very thin, filmy discs, with a hole in the 

 centre. Seeking a reason for this, it appears to me that these, 

 their feet-coverings, become worn by crawling and climbing over 

 the rough rocks, and that it is a provision of nature for the 

 renewal of the holding surface of their suckers, necessary for 

 the production of a sufficient vacuum, and the very best method 

 by which the repairs of the soles of their boots can be " neatly 

 executed." And, as their feet increase in size with their general 

 growth, it may also be that they outgrow their shoes as quickly 

 as children do theirs, and that, therefore, they cast them perio- 

 dically when they require larger ones, as the barnacles do their 

 plumes, the Crustacea their shells, and snakes their skins. 



Sometimes the whole shoe is thrown off; at others only the 

 sole. When the octopus desires to get rid of this worn skin it 

 curls its arms together close to its body in a peculiar manner, and 

 rubs them one against another with a rapid motion of coiling and 

 uncoiUng which suggests the action of " Sir Jacob," the father of 

 Thomas Hood's *'Miss Kilmansegg," when he 



" In the fulness of joy and hope, 

 Seemed washing his hands with invisible soap 

 In imperceptible water. " 



