196 THE OCTOPUS. 
fish, and suddenly knocked it senseless, so does 
the arm of the octopus paralyse its victim; then, 
winding a great sucker-clad cable round the 
palsied fish 
round anything to be conveyed to the mouth— 
draws the dainty morsel to the centre of the 
disc, where the beaked mouth seizes, and soon 
as an elephant winds its trunk 
sucks it in. 
I am perfectly sure, from frequent observa- 
tion, the octopus has the power of numbing its 
prey ; and the sucking-discs along each ray are 
more for the purposes of climbing and holding- 
on whilst fishing, than for capturing and detain- 
ing slippery prisoners. The suckers are very 
large, and arranged in triple rows along the 
under-surface of the ray, decreasing in size to- 
wards the point, and possessing wonderful powers ~ 
of adhesion. 
As illustrating the size of these suckers, I may 
as well confess toa blunder I once made. It was 
an extremely low tide, and I was far out on the 
rocks at Esquimalt Harbour, hunting the pools, 
when I saw what I fancied a huge actinia, as 
big as an egecup, its tentacles hauled in, and, 
having detached its disc from the rocks, was 
‘waiting for the tide: placing the fancied prize 
safely in my collecting-box, to my disgust, on 
