CEPHALOPODA. 301 



The Common Poulpe (Octopus vulgaris), represented 

 in Fig. 239, will serve to illustrate the general struc- 

 ture and habits of the class. A single glance at our 

 engraving, representing one of these animals ensconced 

 in the entrance of his den, is sufficient to convince us 

 of the very un amiable character of such a monster. 

 The giants and ogres of romance were never so fear- 

 fully armed, or clothed by the wildest fiction with 

 so terrible an aspect. Eminently carnivorous, vora- 

 cious, and fierce, these animals feed largely upon 

 fishes, whose activity and slippery mail would elude 

 a less effective apparatus than is here provided for 

 their destruction. Beneath the staring eyes that 

 indicate the creature's head, are spread eight strong 

 and fleshy arms, united at their bases by a broad mus- 

 cular expansion, and furnished upon their under sur- 

 face with a hundred and twenty pairs of powerful 

 and tenacious suckers, each of which might be com- 

 pared to an air-pump in its efficiency and mode of 

 action. No sooner does the Cuttle-fish, by throwing 

 out its long flexible arms, bring but a few of its 

 two thousand suckers in contact with the surface of 

 its victim, than they adhere with unrelenting perti- 

 nacity, and the arms are swiftly twined around the 

 struggling prey, which vainly strives to disengage 

 itself from so fearful and so fatal an embrace. Their 

 quickness of sight and the facility with which they 

 detach their suckers is wonderful. Mr. Broderip 

 attempted with a hand-net to catch an Octopus 

 floating by with its long flexible arms entwined round 

 a fish that it was tearing with its sharp bill. It 

 allowed the net to approach within a short distance 

 before relinquishing its prey ; when in an instant it 

 relaxed its thousand suckers, exploded its inky 

 ammunition, and rapidly retreated under cover of 

 the cloud thus occasioned, by rapid and vigorous 

 strokes of its circular web. These cuttle-fishes 

 also escape detection by a very extraordinary 

 chameleon-like power of changing colour. They 

 appear to vary their tints according to the nature of 



