GIGANTIC CEPHALOPODS. 155 



the suckers adhere with such tenacity, that the arm may 

 be wrenched off sooner than they will yield. In an in- 

 stant, all the arms are brought into work ; they enfold 

 the fated victim, struggling uselessly in the gripe of its 

 destroyer ; closer and closer is it forced to the mouth, 

 and there retained as by a vice. And now begins the 

 feast; with its strong hooked beak, the cephalopod 

 easily demolishes a fish, and even breaks up and strips 

 off the defensive armour of the crab, so powerful are 

 the muscles which act upon the jaws. 



In our seas, none of the cephalopods are large 

 enough to be formidable to man; but in the Indian 

 seas, species of gigantic size have been known, it is 

 asserted, to entwine their dreaded grasp round persons 

 while bathing, and to drag them, vainly struggling, to 

 destruction. But how, it may be asked, do the suckers 

 of the arms of these animals act? Each sucker is a 

 self-acting cupping-glass, or rather air-pump, of most 

 precise and beautiful construction. It consists of an 

 adhesive disc, composed of a muscular membrane, with 

 a thick fleshy circumference, and presenting, when ex- 

 panded, a number of radii, converging to surround the 

 circular mouth of an inner cavity. At the bottom of 

 this cavity is a moveable muscular piston, which, when 

 the sucker is not in action, appears level with the circu- 



