440 
The Animal-Lore of ShaJcspeare’s Time. 
many feet, which hath a pipe on his back, whereby he puts to sea, and 
he moves that sometimes to the right side, sometimes to the left. 
Moreover, with his legs as if it were by hollow places, dispersed here 
and there, and by his toothed nippers, he fastneth on every living 
creature that come near to him, that wants blood. Whatever he eats 
he heaps up in the holes wherein he resides: then he casts out the 
skins, having eaten the flesh, and hunts after fishes that swim to 
them: also he casts out the shels, and hard out-sides of crabs that 
remain. He changeth his colour by the colour of the stone he sticks 
unto, especially when he is frighted at the sight of his enemy, the 
conger. He hath four great middle feet, and in all eight; a little 
body, which the great feet make amends for. He hath also some small 
feet that are shadowed, and can scarce be perceived. By these he 
sustains, moves, and defends himself, and takes hold of what is from 
him ; and he lies on his back upon the stones.” (Page 232.) 
Montaigne ( Essay liv.) distinguishes between the 
power possessed by the polypus of changing its hue, and 
the similar faculty of the chameleon :— 
“ The cameleon takes her colour from the place upon which it is 
laid; but the polypus gives himself what colour he pleases, according 
to occasion^ either to conceal himself from what he fears, or from that 
he has a design to seize: in the cameleon ’tis a passive, but in the 
polypus ’tis an active change.” 
Thomas Stevens, the first Englishman who was known 
to have reached India by way of the Cape of 
Good Hope, describes in a letter written from 
Goa, in the year 1579, an animal that seems to corre¬ 
spond to the Nautilus. Stevens writes:— 
“ Along all that coast we oftentimes saw a thing swimming upon 
the water like a cock’s comb (which they call a Ship of Guinea), but 
the colour much fairer, which comb standeth upon a thing almost like 
the swimmer [bladder] of a fish in colour and bigness, and beareth 
under the water, strings, which savetli it from turning over. This 
thing is so poisonous that a man cannot touch it without great peril.” 
(Arber’s English Garner, vol. i. p. 131.) 
The Cuttle-fish is noticed by Du Bartas :— 
“ Even so, almost, the many spotted cuttle 
Cuttle-fish. Well-neer insnared yet escapeth suttle ; 
