The Devil-fish (octopus vulgaris) is defined as a dibranchiate cephalopod, or two-gilled sepia, commonly called the cuttle-fish. It belongs to the molluscs, or soft-bodied animals, a branch of the animal kingdom, having its members constructed on the plan of a sack (hence sometimes called saccata), with the addition of a large head, a pair of large eyes, a mouth furnished with sharp jaws, around which cluster its formidable arms, or tentacles; the latter are united at the base with a web, and furnished with suckers. They swim by opening and shutting their arms like an umbrella, in which habit they resemble the jelly-fish.

Naturalists furnish us with authentic records of the occurrence of octopi of gigantic size: one such has been found floating on the Atlantic that weighed over two hundred pounds. Banks and Solander mention one six feet long. They are frequently found to measure four feet between the extremities of the arms, giving them power to explore a space of about twelve feet, taking the mouth for the central point.

Many writers have given us records of personal encounters with the octopus: here is a recent case in point, extracted from "A Chapter on Cuttle Fish," by Lucie L. Hartt.

"It was during my visit to Brazil that one day, while busily engaged in examining a reef at a little town on the coast, called Guarapary, my eye fell on an object in a shallow tide-pool packed away in the crevice of the reef, which excited my curiosity. I could see nothing but a pair of very bright eyes; but concluding that the eyes had an owner, I determined very rashly to secure him. I had been handling corals, and seemed to have forgotten that all the inhabitants of the sea are not harmless. I put my hand down very quietly, so as not to ruffle the water, when suddenly, to my surprise, it was seized with a pressure far too ardent to be agreeable, and I was held fast. I tugged hard to get away; but this uncivil individual, whoever he was. evidently had as strong a hold on the rocks as he had on my hand, and was not easily to be persuaded to let go of either. At last, however, he became convinced that he

must choose between us, and so let go his hold upon the rocks, and I found clinging to my right hand, by his long arms, a large octopod cuttle-fish, and I began to suspect that I had caught a Tartar. His long arms were wound around my hand, and these arms, by the way, were covered with rows of suckers, somewhat like those with which boys lift stones, and escape from them was almost impossible. I knew that this fellow's sucking propensities were not his worst ones; for these cuttle-fish are furnished with sharp jaws, and they know how to use them too; so I attempted to rid myself of him. But the rascal, disengaging one slimy arm, wound it about my left hand also, and I was a helpless prisoner. In vain I struggled to free myself,-he only clasped me the tighter. In vain I shouted to my companion,-he had wandered out of hearing. I was momentarily expecting to be bitten, when the 'bicho' suddenly changed his mind. I was never able to discover whether he was smitten with remorse and retired with amiable intentions, or whether he only yielded to the force of circumstances. At any rate, he suddenly relinquished his hold upon my hands and dropped to the sand. Then, raising himself on his long slimy arms, he stalked away towards the water, making such a comical figure that in spite of my fright I indulged in a hearty laugh. He looked like a huge and a very tipsy spider, staggering away on his exceedingly long legs."

Pearl divers dread the large sepias. In describing the peculiar dangers that beset the native pearl fisheries on the American shore of the Pacific, a recent traveller classes them thus: 1, the blanket-fish; 2, the octopus; 3, the shark; reporting that a skilled diver can always escape the latter, but is comparatively defenceless against the two former dangers.

Mr. Gosse, in his "Romance of Natural History" (first series), reports the case of a European traveller, who could not escape single-handed from the attack of an octopus-one not of large size, and on land.

Prolific, bountiful NATURE affords a study of many varied forms. of life. The exaggeration of some of her chief peculiarities has given us the monsters of fable; not entirely fabricated by an exercise of the imagination, but founded in all cases, most probably,

upon some basis of fact; all having some groundwork of reality to start from, but magnified by man's ignorance, credulity, and fears. Thus the centaur of antiquity is explained as originating in man's conquest of the horse, and its adaptation to uses of locomotion, when early equestrians first showed themselves to non-riders; and the mythical Kraken of Scandinavian antiquity is resolved into a cuttle-fish of gigantic size.

This Kraken, the dread of northern sailors in olden time, is the foundation of Victor Hugo's modern incident: but there is nothing in the novelist's imaginary scene which has not its counterpart in the accurate descriptions of sober naturalists.

Mr. Lord,* a well-known traveller, has placed on record his own experiences of the octopus, in a "Gossip about Man-Suckers," contributed to Mr. Hardwicke's Science Gossip of 1865, page 50, from which the following passages are extracted and placed in juxtaposition with parallel passages from the "Toilers of the Sea."

* John Keast Lord, Esq., F.Z.S., &c. &c. Naturalist to the Kedive's Egyptian Exploration Expeditions.

In this case of Naturalist v. Novelist, the charge is made that Victor Hugo's devil-fish, though so much like Mr. Lord's mansucker, is yet not a thing of nature, but a creature of romance, being a compound of several creatures; if, therefore, Mr. Lord is true to nature, and Victor Hugo not true to nature, it follows that the latter has, in some particulars, described his animal wrongly.

A close perusal of "The Toilers" has failed to convince me that he has done so; and with such remarkable parallelisms as are here shown, it would seem more ingenuous to say that the narrator has misdescribed, than that the novelist has invented; and it is in the conviction that none of Victor Hugo's critics have read Mr. Lord's description that the writer now issues this paper.

Appended hereto is a wood-cut of the Octopus itself, which presents to the eye those distinguishing characteristics that readers of "The Toilers" are familiar with.

A H GENT.

Described by Henry Woodward, Esq., of the British Museum, in "The Student

and Intellectual Observer," for Nov. 1869, p. 243.