CEPHALOPODA. 123 



naturalist and philosopher, who considered its recep- 

 tacle an analogue of the bladder in Vertebrate animals. 

 The purple fluid of Aplysia is probably of the same 

 nature. Some of his successors dealt more in fabulous 

 tales than in such accurate and careful investigations. 

 I will content myself with giving a sample of these 

 stories. According to Oppian the Polypus is so vora- 

 cious that when it keeps its den in winter as a shelter 

 from storms, and can procure no food, it eats its own 

 arms, which soon grow again, so as to be always ready 

 to appease its hunger ; and sometimes in the summer it 

 climbs olive-trees to get at the fruit. ^Elian tells us 

 that a Polypus, which had grown to the size of a whale, 

 crept up a sewer into the house of a merchant at 

 Puteoli, and devoured his stock of salt fish. Not less 

 credulous in modern times was Denys de Montfort, 

 whose "poulpe colossal/' in the act of scuttling a 

 three-master, is represented in the woodcut (copied 

 from Sonnini's edition of Buffon) at the end of this sub- 

 ject. Victor Hugo's fanciful account of the "pieuvre" 

 (Octopus vulgaris), in his ' Travailleurs de la mer/ is 

 more excusable, because he does not pretend to be a 

 naturalist. But the real men of science, from Swam- 

 merdam and Lister to Cuvier, Owen, and Steenstrup, 

 who have studied the Cephalopods in every aspect, are 

 very numerous ; and I regret that want of space pre- 

 vents my doing justice to their researches. Two or 

 three points yet remain to be cleared up. Loven re- 

 gards the funnel as the homologue of a foot ("pes in 

 tubum propulsorium efformatus ") ; but Mecznikow 

 disputes this; and I am inclined to agree with the 

 Russian zoologist, for the reason inferentially assigned 

 in my description of the class. Aristotle says that 

 when the female Sepia has laid its eggs, the male swims 



