The Octopus of Fiction 131 



thing, however, I do know, and that is that the many 

 sensational pieces of fiction which have been built up 

 Jules Verne and Victor Hugo fashion, are not worth 

 wasting thought over. 



For first of all the Octopus does not grow to any 

 great size as far as we know, and certainly from the 

 fact of its habitat being invariably shallow waters, 

 we are in a far better position to know the facts as to 

 its limitations of growth than of any other Cephalopod. 

 Its limit of size, as far as at present ascertained, is 

 body about the size of a football, tentacles four feet 

 in length. Quite big enough to drown two or there 

 men at once, if only it got the opportunity, but how 

 far removed from the fearsome monsters of the French 

 novelists. To sum up, the Octopus is like the rest 

 of his appalling family, a fellow of whom no one can 

 conscientiously say much that is good ; but as with 

 the alligator, the mosquito, and the louse, since the 

 Lord has seen fit to create him and place him in his 

 present position, it does not become short-sighted man 

 to question that Supreme Wisdom. 



Yet there is one point in the economy of the Octopus 

 which we may well admire, the wonderful arrangement 

 of sucking discs or acetahulae upon the inside of each 

 of his arms. Their number runs into hundreds, and 

 each of them is a perfect miniature receiver of an 

 air-pump, acting automatically. In one experiment 

 I made, I found that a sucker less than half an inch 

 across lifted a tin dish weighing over a pound, and held 

 it suspended in the air for several minutes. At this 

 time the Octopus had been some time out of water, 

 and was not far from death, so that his power of suction 

 by means of his acetahulae was very much diminished. 

 Finally, it may be laid down as a fact that the Octopoda 

 do exhibit an intelligence and a ferocity in attack upon 



