16 OCTOPODIDiB, 



a large stone, or in the wide cleft of a rock, where an Octopus 

 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 working 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 converting arms into 

 legs, march on like a huge spider. Grymnasts 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 algse, perfoi"m 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 

 paralyze its victim; then winding a great sucker-clad cable round 

 the palsied fish, he draws the daint}^ morsel to the centre of the 

 disk, where the beaked mouth seizes, and soon sucks it in. 



" I am perfectly sure, from frequent observations, the Octopus 

 has the power of numbing its prey ; and the sucking disks along 

 each ray are more for the purposes of climbing and holding 

 on whilst fishing, than for capturing and detaining slippery 

 prisoners. 



" The Indian looks upon the Octopus as an alderman does on 

 turtle, and devours it with equal gusto and relish, onlji^the savage 

 roasts the glutinous carcase instead of boiling it. His mode of 

 catching octopi is crafty in the extreme, for redskin well knows, 

 from past experience, that were the Octopus once to get some of 

 its huge arms over the side of the canoe, and at the same time a 

 holdfast on the wrack, it could as easily haul it over as a child 

 could upset a basket. Paddling the canoe close to the rocks, and 

 quietly pushing aside the wrack, the savage peers through the 

 crystal water, until his practised eye detects an Octopus, with 

 its great rope-like arms stiffened out, waiting patiently for food. 

 His spear is twelve feet long, armed at the end with four pieces 

 of hard wood, made harder by being baked and charred in the 



