ECONOMIC VALUE OF CUTTLE-FISHES. 87 



brown stew, they make a dish by no means to be despised, 

 excellent in both substance and flavour. A modern Lycian 

 dinner, in which stewed cuttle-fish formed the first, and roast 

 porcupine the second course, would scarcely fail to be relished by 

 an unprejudiced epicure in search of novelty." 



I have tasted the octopus, sepia, and loligo, and am quite of 

 Professor Forbes's opinion that they are very palatable when 

 really well cooked. They are all the better for being dressed 

 with made gravy, but may be eaten plainly boiled, and served 

 with egg-sauce. They are apt, however, to be very tough unless 

 slowly simmered, and should first be well beaten with a wooden 

 mallet or the flat of a cleaver. At Gibraltar, the Spanish fisher- 

 men may frequently be observed engaged in softening an octopus 

 by dashing it several times w^ith great violence on the stone 

 landing steps at the fish-market.* The flavour is not unlike that 

 of the skate, or the white part of a scallop. A writer in the 

 " Echo " called the flesh of the octopus " a sort of marine tripe, 

 the chief merit of which lay in the sauce in which it was served." 

 I am inclined to agree with him. 



* The special correspondent at Gibraltar of the Daily Telegraph (Mr. George 

 Augustus Sala) wrote as follows on this subject : — For the information of Mr. 

 Henry Lee, I may observe that nothing whatever is known at Gib. about the 

 terrible octopus who is said to have sucked the boatswain of a man-of-war into 

 the lowermost depths of Davy Jones's locker ; but there are legends commonly 

 recited in the smoking-room of the King's Arms as to an octopus that held on 

 to a sharp rock with one set of suckers, and capsized a felucca from Algeciras 

 with the other. The Spaniards eat this horrible creature very willingly. 

 When they catch him, they first pound him violently between two stones, as 

 some cooks are in the habit of thwacking beefsteaks of which the tenderness 

 is doubtful, and then they hang him up in the sun until his abominable body 

 and limbs are dried. Ultimately they fry him in oil, and declare that he is 

 very nice. I have an idea that I must have eaten fried octopus for supper at 

 Bobadilla, and that it was the delicacy which gave me such a thorough disgiist 

 of the place. The octopus, nevertheless, under the name of ptilpo^ is popular 

 enough throughout Southern Spain, and is equally common, and equally 

 devoured, on the coast of Algeria and jNIorocco. — Daily Telegraphy March 15, 

 1875. 



