68 HABITS OF THE CEPHALOPODA. 



water, there is no doubt, and it appeared to me certain that it 

 could, moreover, take a good aim by directing the tube or 

 siphon on the under side of its body. From the difficulty 

 which these animals have in carrying their heads, they cannot 

 crawl with ease when placed on the ground. I observed that 

 one which I kept in the cabin was slightly phosphorescent after 

 dark." Charles Darwin.* 



Y. The ordinary resting-place of this hideous sea-beast is 

 under a large stone, or in the wide cleft of a rock, where an Oc- 

 topus can creep and squeeze itself with the flatness of a sand- 

 dab, or the slipperiness of an eel. Its modes of locomotion are 

 curious and varied ; using the eight arms as paddles, and work- 

 ing them alternately, the central disk representing a boat, octopi 

 row themselves along with an ease and celerity comparable to 

 the many-oared caique that glides over the tranquil waters of the 

 Bosphorus ; they can ramble at will over the sandy roadways. 

 intersecting their submarine parks, and con verting arms into 

 legs, march on like a huge spider. Gymnasts of the highest 

 order, they climb the slippery ledges, as flies walk up a window- 

 pane ; attaching the countless suckers that arm the terrible limbs 

 to the face of the rocks, or to the wrack and sea-weed, they go 

 about back downward, like marine sloths, or. clinging with one 

 arm to the waving alga 1 , perform series of trapeze movements 

 that Leotard might view with envy. 



I do not think, in its native element, an octopus often catches 

 prey on the ground or on the rocks, but waits for them just as 

 the spider does, only the octopus converts itself into a web. and 

 a fearful one too. Fastening one arm to a stout stalk of the 

 great sea-wrack, stiffening out the other seven, one would hardly 

 know it from the wrack amongst which it is concealed. Patiently 

 he bides his time, until presently a shoal of fish come gaily on. 

 Two or three of them rub against the arms: fatal touch! As 

 though a powerful electric shock had passed through the fish. 

 and suddenly knocked it senseless, so does the arm of the 

 octopus paralv/e its victim; then winding a gretit sucker-clad 

 cable round the palsied lish. draws the dainty morsel to the 



Narrative of "Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle," iii, p. 6, 1839. 



