220 
LAEGE OCTOPUS. 
up in heaps, and hundreds of the large tunicated 
curious Cryptochiton Stelleri, a sort of coat-of-mail 
mollusk, detached by the gale from the off-lying 
submerged rocks, and cast, like shipwrecked sailors, 
on the shore. Dashed against the cliffs and ground 
by rolling boulders, their internal valves were 
mostly crushed, and here and there their mangled 
bodies were found, having been carried to the tops 
of rounded stones, and their bones picked clean 
by sea birds. I walked solitary and musing, up 
and down the bay, throwing mutilated Chitons 
by dozens into the sea, and was rewarded now and 
then by finding one tolerably perfect. Several 
specimens of the large Octopus, or cuttlefish — 
possibly the rather apocryphal 0. chinensis — had 
been cast asliore, and I had thus an opj)ortunity 
of securing the homy mandibles, the rudimentary 
skuU, and some of the suckers from the arms. One 
I measured was six feet from the tip of one arm to 
the tip of the op 2 >osite arm. The large eyes of this 
creature are covered with the skin, with the excep- 
tion of a small round aperture ; the body is black. 
