204 DIVERSIONS OF A NATURALIST 



bodies, each with a long stalk and all joined on to a 

 common branching stem : the whole resembled a head of 

 millet seed. The female tended her eggs by continually- 

 pumping a stream of water over them, and could not be 

 driven from them. She fought savagely and heroically in 

 their defence. But I succeeded in enticing her into a net 

 by aid of a toothsome crab, and then took a few — only a 

 few — of the cherished eggs, and replaced their mother 

 in the tank, where she at once resumed the "incubation " 

 of her eggs. For it is an " incubation," although one in 

 which oxygenated water, and not warmth, is the accom- 

 paniment of the sitting of the " hen." I was able to 

 watch the development of the young within the trans- 

 parent eggs, which I kept in a stream of fresh sea- 

 water, and I published a short account of what was 

 novel in the growth of these embryos. It had not been 

 studied previously, nor have I seen any later account of 

 the development of octopus. The true cuttle-fish, with 

 the hard oblong shell sunk in the back, lays each egg 

 in a dark leathery shell. They look like small grapes, 

 and are left, thus protected, to their fate. They have 

 been studied, both before I obtained octopus eggs and 

 since, in great detail. The " squid " embeds her eggs, 

 many together, in bunches of long fingers of colourless 

 jelly. Only the octopus and the argonaut, among 

 Cephalopods, are known to give maternal care and 

 incubation to their eggs. 



