THE WILD. 



which could now be seen between the roots of its 

 arms, in a position to bite. A sensation of horror 

 pervaded his whole frame, when he found that 

 this monstrous animal had fixed itself so firmly on 

 his arm. He describes its cold, slimy grasp as 

 extremely sickening; and he loudly called to the 

 captain, who was similarly engaged at some dis- 

 tance, to come and release him of his disgusting 

 assailant. The captain quickly came, and, taking 

 him down to the boat, during which time Mr. 

 Beale was employed in keeping the beak of the 

 Octopus away from his hand, soon released him 

 by destroying his tormentor with the boat-knife, 

 when he disengaged it by portions at a time. 

 This Cephalopod measured across its expanded 

 arms about four feet, while its body was not big- 

 ger than a man's fist.* 



The shriek of the jackal bursting on the ear in 

 the silence of night has been described by many a 

 dweller in tents in the East as a most appalling 

 sound. But perhaps this yields in effect to the 

 combined efforts of the howling-monkeys in a 

 South American forest. This most striking of all 

 animal voices is heard occasionally at sunrise and 

 sunset, and sometimes in the heat of the day, but 

 more frequently during the darkness of the night. 

 When near, the roar is terrific: a naturalist! has 

 compared it to the tempest howling through 

 rocky caverns. It is a noise so unearthly, that, 

 heard unexpectedly for the first time, it would fill 

 the mind with the most melancholy and fearful 

 forebodings. 



A traveller in the western wilds of North Amer- 

 ica bivouacking on the open prairie, awakened at 

 midnight by the voices of a pack of prairie- wolves 



* " Hist, of the Sperm Whale." 

 t Mr. Bates, in the Zoologist, p. 3593. 

 15 225 



