Desiring to have a better view than I had previously been able to obtain of that which follows the seizure of a crab by an octopus, I fastened one to a string, by which an attendant was to lower it in the water close to the glass, whilst I stood watching in front. The crab had hardly descended to the depth of two feet before an octopus for which it was not intended, and which I had not observed (so exactly had he assumed the hue of the surface to which he clung), shot out like a rocket from one side of the tank, opened his membranous umbrella, shut up the suspended crab within it, and darted back again to the ledge of rock on which he had been lying in ambush. There he held on, with the crab firmly pressed between his body and the stone work. As this was not what I wished, I directed my assistant to gently try to pull the bait away from him. As soon as he felt the strain, he took a firm grasp of the rock with all the suckers of seven of his arms, and, stretching the eighth aloft, coiled it round the tautened line, the suckers actually closing on the line also, as a caterpillar’s foot gripes a thin twig, or a cobbler’s leather pad folds round his thread when he is making a wax-end. It then became a game of “pull devil, pull baker,” and the “devil-fish” won it. Noticing several jerks on the string, I thought at first they were given by the man overhead, and told him not to use too much force; but he called out, “It’s not me, sir, it’s the octopus: I can’t move him; and he’s pulling so hard that, if I don’t let go, he’ll break the line.” “Hold on, then, and let him break it,” I replied. Tug! tug! dragged the tough, strong arm of the octopus; and at the third tug the line broke, and the crab was all his own. The twine was that used for mending the seine net, and was therefore not particularly weak.