24 2 SEA FABLES EXPLAINED. 



Professor Steenstrup says * that almost every octopus he 

 has examined has had one or two arms reproduced ; and 

 that he has seen females in which all the eight arms had 

 been lost, but were more or less restored. He also 

 mentions a male in which this was the case as to seven of its 

 arms. He adds that whilst the Octopoda possess the power 

 of reproducing with great facility and rapidity their arms, 

 which are exposed to so many enemies, the Decapoda the 

 Sepiida and Squids appear to be incapable of thus 

 repairing and replacing accidental injuries. This is 

 entirely in accord with my own observations. 



This reparative power is possessed by some other animals, 

 of which the starfishes and Crustacea are the most familiar 

 instances. In the case of the lobster or crab, however, the 

 only joint from which new growth can start is that con- 

 nected with the body, so that if a limb be injured in any 

 part, the whole of it must be got rid of, and the animal has, 

 therefore, the power of casting it off at will. The octopus, 

 on the contrary, is incapable of voluntary dismemberment, 

 but reproduces the lost portion of an injured arm, as an 

 out-growth from the old stump. 



The ancients were well acquainted with this reparative 

 faculty of the octopus : but of course the simple fact was 

 insufficient for an imaginative people : and they therefore 

 embellished it with some fancies of their own. There 

 lingers still amongst the fishermen of the Mediterranean a 

 very old belief that the octopus when pushed by hunger 

 will gnaw and devour portions of its arms. Aristotle knew 

 of this belief, and positively contradicted it ; but a fallacy 

 once planted is hard to eradicate. You may cut it down, 

 and apparently destroy it, root and branch, but its seeds 

 are scattered abroad, and spring up elsewhere, and in un- 

 * Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist. August, 1857. 



