THE MOLLUSCA 221 



but simply disarticulates them, and with the slender tips of 

 its tentacles removes every vestige of the edible parts. 

 The horny beak does not seem to be employed, except in 

 taking from the tentacle suckers the portions they have 

 removed. 



The only active resisters I have seen to the attentions 

 of the octopus are the lobster and the fiddler crab. This 

 last, as I have stated in describing it, is very pugnacious, 

 and even the presence of the crab's arch-enemy does not 

 make it quail. But its resistance and clanging of claws 

 avails it nothing : a hundred or two of active suckers 

 attached to flexible and muscular arms render it powerless 

 in a second. 



The lobster, if a large one, the octopus approaches with 

 circumspection, endeavouring to secure its claws with 

 tentacle tips, and, of course, manages this in a very short 

 time. 



In an animal possessing such an outfit of motile ap- 

 pendages it is natural that the means of locomotion would 

 be varied, and they are so to a degree. 



The octopus can proceed at a goodly rate by the simple 

 process of walking, spiderlike, although it more frequently 

 seems to glide along, throwing its long arms as far for- 

 ward as they will reach and making fast its suckers to the 

 ground, releasing the hold, and repeating the operation as 

 it brings its body up to the advanced point. For a short 

 distance swim it paddles with its tentacles, with the 

 queerest antics that can be imagined, but for a ' business " 

 swim, as on its migrations, it propels itself body foremost, 

 tentacles, closed together to a tapered point, bringing up 

 the rear. This progression it performs by filling the mantle 

 cavity with water and expelling it with force from the 

 syphon tube just the process of breathing performed with 

 some additional vigour. 



Each expulsion of water drives the animal along six or 



