THE OCTOPUS AND CUTTLE FISH. 207 



indeed, in the Indian seas, are reported to grow to a size 

 that renders them formidable even to ships, wrapping them 

 in its embrace and dragging the sailors from the deck or 

 shrouds. Even allowing for exaggeration, there can be little 

 doubt that enormous specimens are occasionally met with, 

 and that these would be formidable to small vessels. Bodies 

 have been cast ashore whose arms have measured thirty 

 feet in length, and these could well pluck a sailor from the 

 deck of a ship. On our own shores they are, happily, never 

 met with of formidable size, but comparatively large ones 

 are encountered not far south ; for it may be taken that the 

 desperate struggle described by Victor Hugo in " The Toilers 

 of the Sea " was at least not considered by him to be im- 

 possible, and that he had heard from fishermen of the 

 existence of creatures as large as the one he described. The 

 octopus appears almost insensible to pain, and the hacking 

 off of one or more of its tentacles does not seem to cause it 

 any inconvenience. Its body or rather its stomach is its 

 only vital part, and even this must be almost cut into pieces 

 before it will relinquish the hold it has obtained of a prey. 

 The beak of a parrot is the last thing one would expect to 

 find in the centre of these waving tentacles, and Nature 

 apparently placed it there as the crowning effort in the work 

 of construction of this monster. 



Among birds, beasts, and fishes we may seek in vain for 

 a prototype of the octopus. To find one we must go to 

 man, and we shall find that, in his way, the professional 

 money-lender bears a close resemblance to this creature. 

 The waving arms, that by their resemblance to great sea- 

 weeds lull a passing fish into a sense of security, are repre- 

 sented in the case of the money-lender by flattering and 



