Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, March 1899: Volume LIV, No. 5, March 1899Various
History
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, March 1899: Volume LIV, No. 5, March 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
The next tank revealed even greater surprise than we had yet seen.
Here in the water long white gauze ribbons were waving, as if hung
from above, and so transparent that we could see quite through them,
almost as if they were composed of the white of an egg. It was only by
looking closely that up near the top we could see a tiny black dot,
like a pinhead, in each fleecy scarf. This was the head of the animal,
or its eye, or mouth, or whatever such a delicate dot might be called.
These are of the jellyfish family, and have only lately been added to
the aquarium. Owing to the difficulty of procuring such pulplike
masses, they are extremely rare specimens, and can be seen nowhere
else. Surely nothing more frail, more delicately lovely exists on land
or sea, in plant or animal life, than these gauzy living sashes of the
sea.
But not all the denizens of the tanks are beautiful to look upon.
There is a tank near the door of entrance filled with objects so
hideous that one starts away from them with horror. These are the
octopi, or devilfish. Imagine the ugliest, biggest black spider that
you ever saw, and enlarge it to the size of the largest turtle you
ever saw, and on the end of each of the spider's legs fasten a
wicked-looking mouth, and you can form some idea of how frightful an
octopus can be.
Several of these monsters were writhing near the glass wall,
stretching out their long, boneless arms, and sometimes fastening
their suckers upon the glass in the search for food, thus
unconsciously showing off the ugliness of their mouths. It was now
time for the keeper to come to them in his round of feeding. He put
into the tank from above a number of crabs, when suddenly the whole
tank seemed filled with octopi. They had been sleeping among the dark
rocks, of which they were so much the color that we had not before
observed them. The poor little crabs had probably been stunned, or
perhaps killed, by the keeper, for they made no resistance when the
octopi fastened upon them their long suckers in a death-grasp. The
octopi fought with each other over the possession of the crabs, and
for some moments there was a terrible waving to and fro of black
suckers fully two yards in length.
Beside this tank was another of clear water in which were some
peaceful cuttlefish. The keeper, for a few coins, stirred these out of
their quiet by moving his long stick after them. They swam about in
fright for a moment or two, and then we saw them no more, for the
clear water had suddenly become a thick black fluid. The cuttlefish
had discharged their bags of ink to escape the pursuing enemy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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