The whole of this is fallacious. The arms of the octopus are not used as weapons of constriction, compression, or suffocation. They are eight radiating, supple, tapering thongs, in ordinary specimens from eighteen inches to two feet long, on each of which are mounted, in a double row, numerous sucking discs, which decrease in size towards the tips of the limbs, and act as so many dry cupping-glasses. There are normally about 240 of these suckers on each arm, making a total of about 1,920. I have counted more in some individuals. M. Hugo gives their number as “fifty on each arm, 400 in all;” so on this point he very much understates his case. [Illustration: Fig. 2. Sucker of the Octopus. (_O. vulgaris_).] 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 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 organs, by which the animal’s prey is caught and held; not by “harpooning,” as the novelist supposes, but by their atmospheric adhesion to the surface 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, air-tight contact with any object it may touch. When experimenting on the holding force of an octopus I have allowed 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 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 indistinguishable circular mark, corresponding with the edge of the larger discs, 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 a horny ring, sharply serrated or dentated around its edge; and in others—for instance, _Onychoteuthis_—the centre of each cup is provided with a sharp, strong hook, capable of being extended or sheathed, like the claws of a cat, which is 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 rock-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 corresponding limbs, two long tentacular arms, which, in some genera, are marvellous in the perfection of their compound apparatus for securing and holding a struggling captive. This arrangement