6o THE OCTOPUS, 



became necessary to screen her from the pubHc gaze. Fearing 

 also that, notwithstanding the cessation of the interruption to 

 which she had been subjected, she might by her over-fussiness 

 destroy the remainder ; or that even if her progeny were safely 

 born, they might hatch out unperceived, and thus our hopes be 

 frustrated and an important observation lost, I decided on remov- 

 ing some of them from the exhibition tank, and placing them in a 

 smaller one in the laboratory, where they could be closely 

 watched. The water was therefore run off till a depth of only 

 about six inches remained j and one of the catkin-like bunches of 

 eggs was carefully detached. To do this neatly, without disturb- 

 ing the other clusters, was not so easy as it might be supposed ; 

 for not only did the hen octopus guard the entrance to her recess, 

 and require careful handling, but the old male also was pugna- 

 cious. As soon as he espied his keeper in the tank, he strode 

 forth from his corner towards him, looking exceedingly savage, 

 and making a demonstration of attack which would have 

 frightened a novice, and led a looker-on to believe that the 

 intruder was about to be the centre figure in a Laocoon group of 

 writhing, twining octopods, and to suffer the fate of Clubin, or 

 to escape only after a terrible combat, like Gilliatf, in M. Victor 

 Hugo's novel. But the old fellow's bark was worse than his bite, 

 for on a bare arm being presented to him in the shallow water, he 

 made no attempt to hold or bite it, but merely scrambled and 

 crawled harmlessly over it. 



By the removal of a portion of these eggs I hoped, also, that an 

 interesting question concerning their development might be finally 

 answered. Aristotle had been understood to affirm that the 

 parent octopus " incubates " her eggs. I had always expressed 

 very decidedly my opinion, derived from previous experiments on 

 the eggs of the cuttle-fish and squid {SeJ)ia and Loligo) that, the 

 ova once impregnated, no incubation by the parent is required or 

 takes place in a sense equivalent to that of a fowl developing 

 a chick by the warmth of its body; but that her unremit- 



