228 CUTTLE-FISH, MOLLUSCA' ETC. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



CUTTLE-FISH, MOLLUSCA, ETC., OF MARINE 

 AQUARIA. 



IN all our large marine aquaria no object has been 

 more popular than the octopus, or " devil fish," as it 

 has been more emphatically called. The weird stories 

 told of it by Victor Hugo, in his 'Toilers of the Sea,' 

 had prepared the public mind for something so ex- 

 ceedingly ugly as to be unusually attractive ; and 

 accordingly the first specimen of a living octopus 

 in the Crystal Palace Aquarium had to bear the 

 uninterrupted gaze of lookers-on for weeks. It sat 

 for its portrait in the illustrated papers, and had all 

 its points noted down by newspaper correspondents 

 with the same faithful detail as if they were those 

 of prize cattle at the Agricultural Show. Brighton 

 afterwards became possessed of one of these animals, 

 and fortunately Mr. Henry Lee was there to study 

 its habits, and to embody them in a series of papers 

 which were collected into a volume not long ago on 

 ' The Devil Fish of Fiction and of Fact.' This is the 

 most interesting work on the cephalopoda we have 

 in our language. 



Since Victor Hugo so largely drew upon his vivid 



