58 



THE OCTOPUS. 



five inches in length. I have counted the eggs of which these 

 clusters are composed, and find that there are about a thousand 

 in each : so that a large octopus produces in 

 • one laying, usually extended over three days, a 



progeny of from 40,000 to 50,000. Our brood- 

 ing French octopus, when undisturbed, would 

 pass one of her arms beneath the hanging 

 bunches of her eggs, and dilating the membrane 

 on each side of it into a boat-shaped hollow, 

 would gather and receive them in it as in a 

 trough or cradle, exhibiting in its general shape 

 and outline a remarkable similarity to those of 

 the argonaut, or *' paper-nautilus," with the eggs 

 of which octopod its own are, as I have already 

 explained, almost identical in form and appear- 

 ance. Then she would caress and gently rub 

 them, occasionally turning towards them the 

 mouth of her flexible exhalent and locomotor 

 tube, like the nozzle of a fireman's hose-pipe, so 

 as to direct upon them a jet of the excurrent 

 water. I believe that the object of the syringing 

 process is to free the eggs from parasitic ani- 

 malcules, and possibly to prevent the growth of 

 conferva, which I have found rapidly overspread 

 those removed from her attention. Week after 

 week, she continued to attend to them with the 

 most watchful and assiduous care, seldom leaving them for an 

 instant except to take food, which, without a brief abandonment 

 of her position, would be beyond her reach. Aristotle asserted 

 that while the female is incubating she takes no food. This is 

 incorrect. 



In the tank with our specimen were seven others of her species, 

 and to supply them with food about five-and-twenty living shore 

 crabs {Carcinus vioenas) were daily tossed into it. Although she 



Fig. 6. Eggs of 

 the Octopus. 

 {fi. zmlgaris) 



