With excellent opportunities of studying the habits and movements of living cephalopods, and with dead specimens of these animals on the table before me, I have followed, scalpel in hand, the minute description of their anatomy given by Professor Owen, in his masterly treatise in the “Cyclopædia of Anatomy,” and by De Ferussac and D’Orbigny in their splendid monograph on the same subject; the two great sources from which almost all, if not all, subsequent writers have drawn much of their information. Quotations from other authors will be found duly noted. I am indebted to my friend Mr. Thomas Davidson, F.R.S., &c., for the beautiful portrait of the Octopus, which forms the frontispiece to this volume; to Mrs. Edward Harris for the drawing of its eggs (fig. 6); to Miss Gertrude Woodward for that of its tongue (fig. 4); and to Messrs. West and Co., and Mr. Charles A. Ferrier, for the care they have respectively bestowed on the lithographing and engraving of the illustrations. HENRY LEE. BRIGHTON AQUARIUM, _August, 1875_. CONTENTS. PAGE INTRODUCTION xiii CHAPTER I. THE OCTOPUS AND ITS RELATIVES 1 CHAPTER II. OCTOPODS I HAVE KNOWN 7 CHAPTER III. “THE TOILERS OF THE SEA” 12 CHAPTER IV. THE DEVIL-FISH OF FICTION AND OF FACT 19 CHAPTER V. THE OCTOPUS OUT OF WATER 37 CHAPTER VI. NEW LIMBS FOR OLD ONES 49 CHAPTER VII. SPAWNING OF THE OCTOPUS 56 CHAPTER VIII. CUTTLES AND SQUIDS 67 CHAPTER IX. ECONOMIC VALUE OF CUTTLE-FISHES 83 CHAPTER X. GIGANTIC CUTTLE-FISHES 99 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. FIG. PAGE THE OCTOPUS (_Octopus vulgaris_) _Frontispiece_. 1. THE PAPER NAUTILUS (_Argonauta Argo_) 5 2. SUCKER OF THE OCTOPUS 21 3. MANDIBLES OF THE OCTOPUS 25 4. TONGUE OF THE OCTOPUS 26 5. THE OCTOPUS SWIMMING 28 6. EGGS OF THE OCTOPUS 58 7. THE COMMON CUTTLE-FISH (_Sepia officinalis_) 67 8. SEPIOLA RONDELETII 70 9. THE COMMON SQUID (_Loligo vulgaris_) 71