It is interesting to look back to the beginning of things, to trace the progress of our knowledge of them, and to note the development of our ideas concerning them, and the change of sentiment with which they are regarded. I saw lately a dead octopus, which had acquired “a very ancient and fish-like smell,” kicked about by boys in the carriage-way of a Brighton street without attracting attention; but, so strongly was public interest excited by “the dog-fish and octopus case,” that the press teemed with paragraphs on the “tragic fate of an octopus,” and even in the London daily papers appeared brilliantly written and kindly sympathetic leaders on the subject. The concluding paragraph of one was as follows:—“Thus was an end put to a most distinguished and useful life. Octopuses doubtless die every day, but seldom has there been an octopus who will be so much missed as the octopus at Brighton.” This was prophetic. For nearly two months the loss was not repaired. Golden tench from Aldermaston, trout from Byron’s Newstead, red mullet and other rarities, could not suffice to fill the void. At length, on the 1st of March, a fine specimen was received from Mevagissey, Cornwall. Then Brighton was herself again, and the officials of the Aquarium jubilant. As the spring advanced, facilities for procuring these animals increased. Specimens were sent from the French coast, and others—a dozen at a time—from the Channel Islands, until it appeared not impossible that the octopus would become so abundant, that the very dog-fishes would be satiated with them, like the apprentices with salmon,[11] and parodying the school-boys’ grace “Mutton hot, mutton cold, Mutton new, mutton old, Mutton tender, mutton tough, Of mutton we have had enough—” would refuse to eat one oftener than once a week. Since then, the Brighton Aquarium has only once been without an octopus; and although the popular chief of curiosities in a marine vivarium has doubtless passed the zenith of his greatness, he still holds an honoured place amongst the “past masters” of the tanks. After the publication in the “Times,” “Land and Water” and other papers, of my notes of observations of the habits of the octopus in confinement, I was favoured with several private letters on the subject; some of them from strangers giving me interesting information concerning it, derived from their own experience, and others requesting me to decide between adverse opinions based respectively on the florid conceptions of the novelist, and the scarcely less romantic, though truthful, description of the naturalist.