128 LIFE AND HER CHILDREN. 
"Th' endangered mollusk thus evades his fears, 
And native hoards of fluid safety wears. 
A pitchy ink peculiar glands supply, 
Whose shades the sharpest beam of light defy. 
Pursued he bids the sable fountain flow, 
And wrapt in clouds eludes the impending foe." 
Fishermen assert, and Mr. Darwin and others confirm 
their opinion, that the octopus and cuttle-fish often 
take deliberate aim at an enemy when they squirt out 
this unpleasant fountain. 
But the chief and most powerful weapons of the 
octopus are his so-called arms and his horny beak. 
Just below his large penetrating eyes is spread out a 
crown of eight long tapering ribands (a, Fig. 49), and 
these are, in fact, his foot, answering to that crumpled 
muscular disk upon which the snail walks. In the 
octopus this foot has grown round the neck and then 
divided up into segments, and for this reason he and 
the cuttle-fish and nautilus are called head-footed ani- 
mals (Cephalopoda). The foot of the cuttles has ten 
segments instead of eight, and two are nearly three 
times as long as the others. 
Now watch the octopus lurking in the rockwork of 
the tank, his round body squeezed into some nook, 
and his arms,"" some grasping the rock, others flapping 
idly in the water. If a large fish or crab pass by 
instantly he is on the alert ; the arms in the water, no 
longer listless, dart out and fasten on the luckless 
animal, which is dragged in to the strong beak stand- 
ing out in the centre of the arms and crunched in a 
moment, even the crab's shell cracking like a nut, 
while his flesh is devoured and carried down into the 
* For so we must call them, although they are really strips of his 
foot. 
