The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1873-05-17 00:00:00

THE DEVIL FISH OF FICTION AND OF

FACT.

Mr. Maury Lee, I 1, S., compaing the deecription of the
octopue by M Victor limo, In his Travaukurs de la Mei%
writes in Land and Water—

" In his relation of the manner in which the octopus
captures its prey, the novelist is substantially in
accord with nature. The points on which he chiefly
errs are :-1, the structure, use, capability, and effect
on its victim of its arms and suckers; 2, its general
organization; 3, its mode of progression when swim.
ming • 4, the manner in which it devours and digests
its food. . . . The arms of the octopus are not
used as weapons of constriction, compression, or suf-
focation. They are eight radiating, eupple, tapering
thongs, in ordinary upertimens about 18in. long, on
each of which are mounted, in a doable row, numerous
rucking discs, which...decrease in size toward, the tip et
the limbs, and acts. so many dry cupping-glasses. There
ere normally about 240 of those suckers on each arm,
making a total of about 1,920. I have countrd more in
some individuals. lit. Hugo gives their number as 90 on
each arm, 400 in all ;' so on this point he very much
understates his case. The cups themselves, by their
internal mechanism for air-exhaustion, and consequent
pressure of the outer saint:sphere, adhere firmly to any
substance to which they are applied, whether stone,
fish, crustacean, or flesh of man; but in the octopus
they have no power to puncture or lacerate the skin or
to cause blood to flow. They are merely pneumatically
prehensile organ., by which the animal's prey is caught
and held; not by ' harpooning,' as the novelist sup-
poses, but by their atmospheric adhe.ion to the sur-
face of its body. In this genus the sucking discs are
composed of a muscular membrane, the circumference
of which is thick and fleshy, and in some species
cartilaginous, but in all unarmed, and only adapted
to secure close, airtight contact with any ob-
ject it may touch. When experimenting on
the holding force of an octopus I have allowed it
to fix it. suckers firmly on my arm and the back of
my hantl, and by pretending to try to pull them away
from its grasp have caused it to exert its utmost power
of resistance and retention. The only effect of this has
been that the vacuum produced an almost indis-
tinguishable circular mark, corresponding with the
edge of the larger discs, and rot nearly so distinct as
wdbld be caused by the application of • glass tube to
the skin, and the partial exhaustion of the air in it by
drawing it from other end by the mouth and tongue. In
some of the Cephalopods the outer circle of the cups is
a horny ring, sharply serrated or dentsted around its
edge • and in others—for instance, Onychoteuthis—the
centre of each cup is provided with a sharp, strong
hook, which le plunged deeply into the flesh of slippery
prey for the better security of its hold ; but the cuttle-
fishes thus furnished are, unlike the octopus, habitually
swimmers, instead of reck crawlers.

"The sessile arms of the octopods are considerably
longer than those of the decapods, or ten-armed cuttle-
fishes, but the latter have, in addition to the eight nor-
responding limbs, two long tentaculor arms, which, in
some genera, are marvellous in the perfection of their
compound apparatus for securing and holding a strug-
gling captive. This arrangement is well suited to their
habits and mode of hie. Animals purely swimmers,
and which hunt and overtake their prey by speed,
would be impeded by having to drag after them a bundle
of lengthy appendages trailing heavily astern. But a
long reach of arm is an advantage, instead of a hind-
rance, to the octopus ; for, although it can swim on
OCCABIOO, its ordinary habbit is to remain lurking in
some favourite cranny—its body thrust for protection
well back in the interior of t ho recess—its bright eyes
keenly on the watch ; three or four t..f di arms firmly
attached to the walls of its hidingrplace, the others
gently waving, gliding, and feeling abuut in the water, as
if to maintain its vigilance, and keep ittalf always on
the alert and in readiness to pounce on any unfortunate
wayfarer that may page near its den. 10 small fieh,
crustacean or mollusc, the slighteet cmtact with even
one of those lithe arms ie fatal. lostantaneously as
pull of trigger brings down a bird, or touch of electric
wire explodes a torpe Jo ore mining fuse, the pistons
of the series of suckers are simultaneously drawn in-
ward., the air its removed from tbe pneumatic holders,
and a vacuum created in each; the victim strives to
escape; a further retraction of the central part of the
disc makes all secure; and, as arm after arm, contain-
ing • perfect mitrailleuse of inverted air-guns, takes
horrid hold, battery after battery of them is brought
to bear, and the pressure of the air is so great that
nothing can effect the relaxation of their retentive
power but the destruction of the air-pump that works
them, or the closing of the throttle-valve by which they
are connected with it.
M. Hugo gives us the means of estimating the size
of the body of the octopue which attacked Gillian.
He tells us that its arms were 'nearly • metre (39
Inches) long." None of no great dimensions have, I
believe, been found in the English Channel, but it is
not impossible that such exist. Granting this, the
body of such an octopus would not be much larger theta
wda.water bdttle or a Florence flask, such as olive
oil is sold in; and so the ',horrible bag, which is •
monster, and into which you are to be inhaled and
drawn alive, is but a small affair after all. The sucker,
also, which the novelist says ranged from the size of •
five franc pie-s (which I find to Ife.one-and-a-half inch
in diameter) to that of • split pea, wonti, commencing
at the largest of them at the bases of the arms, he from
the size of a etzpenee to that of the-head of the smallest
of pine. The plain truth is that the octopus and other
cephalopods obtain and eat their food vary much like
the rapacious bird.. They are the falcons ot the Pea.
Some of them, like Osychoteuthis, strike their prey with

talons and—eunkare also ; °than, like th.s ootArms.lll9
hold of it with suckers alone; but they all tear the
flesh with their beaks, and swallow and digest their
food in as unromantic a fashion as does hawk or
vulture."