Connecticut western news., 1873-06-20
The Devil Fish.
What am English Professor says of tn
 Affair.

What am English Professor says of the
 Affair.
 Professor Lee says of the Devil fish: The arms of the octopus are not used as weapons of construction, compression, or suffocation. They are eight tapering thongs, in ordinary specimens about eighteen inches long, on each ot which are mounted, in double row, numer- ous sucking disks, which decrease in size toward the tip of the limbs, and act as so many dry cupping- There are normally about 24O of these suckers on each arm, making total of about 1920. I have counted more in some individuals. The cups themselves, by their internal mechanism for air exhaustion, and consequent pressure of the outer atmosphere, adhere firmly to any substance to which they are ap- piled, 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 organs, by which the ami malls prey is caught and held, by their atmospheric adhesion to the surface of it's body. When experimenting on the holding force of an octopus l have al- lowed it to fix its suckers firmly on my arm and the back of my hand, and by pretending to try to pull them away from it's grasp have caused 1t to exert its utmost power of resistance and reten- tion. The only effect of this has been that the vacuum produced an almost in- distinguishable circular mark, corre- spending with the edge of the larger disks, and not nearly so distinct as would be caused by the application of a glass tube to the skin, and the partial exhaustion of the air in it by drawing it from the other end by the mouth and tongue. In some of the cephalopods the outer circle of the cups is horny ring, sharply serrated or dentated around it's edge; and in others, the centre of each cup is provided with sharp, strong hook, which is plunged deeply into the flesh of slippery prey for the better security of it's hold but the cuttle-fshes thus furnished are, un- like the octopus, habitually swimmers, instead of rock-crawlers. The sessile arms of the octopods are considerably longer than those of the decapods, or ten-armed cuttle-fshes, but the latter have, in addition to the eight corre- spending limbs, two long tentacular arms, which, in some genera, are mar velous in the perfection of their com pound apparatus for securing and hold ing struggling captive. This arrange ment is well suited to their habits and mode of life. Animals purely swim mers, and which hunt and overtake their prey by speed, would be impeded by having to drag after them bundle of lengthy appendages trailing heavily astern. But long reach of arm IS an advantage, instead of hindrance, to the octopus for, although it can swim on occasion, its ordinary habit is to re-
 main lurking in some favorite cranny- it's body thrust for protection well back in the interior of the recess-its bright eyes keenly on the watch three or four of its arms firmly attached to the walls of it's hiding-place, the others gently waving, gliding, and feeling about in the water, as if to maintain it's vigilance and keep itself always on the alert, and in readiness to bounce on any unfortu- nate wayfarer that may pass near it's den. To small fish, crustacean or mol lusk, the slightest contact with even one of those little arms is fatal. In- simultaneously as pull of trigger brings down bird, or touch of electric wire explodes torpedo or mining fuse, the pistons of the series of suckers are sim ultaneously drawn inward, the air is re- moved from the pneumatic holders, and a vacuum created in each; the vic- tim strives to escape !; a further retrac- tion of the central part of the disk makes all secure and, as arm after arm, containing a perfect mltrallleuse 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 re- taxation of their retentive power but the destruction of the air-pump that works them, or the closing of the throt- tle-valve by which they are connected with it. M. Hugo gives us the means of estimating the size of the body of the octopus which attacked Gilliatt. He tells us that its arms were nearly metre (39 inches) long, None of so great dimensions have, I believe, been found in the English Channel, but it is not impossible that such exist. Grant ing this, the body of such an octopus would not be much larger than 8 soda water bottle or a Florence flask, such as olive-oil is sold in and so the horri- ble bag, which is monster and into which you are to be inhaled and drawn alive, is but small affair after all. The sucker, also, which the novelist says ranged from the size of fve-franc piece (which I find to be one and a half inches in diameter) to that of a split pea, would, commencing at the largest of them at the bases of the arms, be from the size of a sixpence to that of the head of the smallest of pins. The plain truth is that the octopus and other cephalopods obtain and eat theil food very much like the rapacious birds. They are the falcons of the sea. Some of them, like the Onychoteuthis. strike their prey with talons and suckers also ; others, like the octopus, lay hol6 of it with suckers alone but they al
 tear the flesh with their peaks, an6
 swallow and digest their food in as un