Although this experiment furnished a fresh illustration of the holding power of an octopus, it had not taught me exactly that which I wanted to know. I wished to be underneath that umbrella with the crab, or (which was decidedly preferable) to be able to see what happened beneath it without getting wet. My plan, therefore, was to procure the seizure of the crab against the front glass, instead of against the rock-work. Our next endeavour was successful. A second crab was so fastened that the string could be withdrawn if desired, and was lowered near to a great male octopus, who generally dwelt in a nook in the west front corner of the tank. He was sleepy, and not very hungry, and required a great deal of tempting to rouse him to activity; but the sight of his favourite food overcame his laziness, and, after some demonstrative panting, puffing, and erection of his tubercles, he lunged out an arm to seize the precious morsel. It was withdrawn from his reach; and so, at last, he turned out of bed, rushed at it, and got it under him against the plate-glass, just as I desired. In a second the crab was completely pinioned. Not a movement, not a struggle was visible or possible: each leg, each claw, was grasped all over by suckers—enfolded in them—stretched out to its full extent by them. The back of the carapace was covered all over with the tenacious vacuum-discs, brought together by the adaptable contraction of the limb, and ranged in close order, shoulder to shoulder, touching each other; whilst, between those which dragged the abdominal plates towards the mouth, the black tip of the hard, horny beak was seen for a single instant protruding from the circular orifice in the centre of the radiation of the arms, and, the next, had crunched through the shell, and was buried deep in the flesh of the victim. The action of an octopus when seizing its prey for its necessary food is very like that of a cat pouncing on a mouse, and holding it down beneath its paws. The movement is as sudden, the scuffle as brief, and the escape of the prisoner even less probable. The fate of the crab is not, really, more terrible than that of the mouse, or of a minnow swallowed by a perch; but there is a repulsiveness about the form, colour, and attitudes of its captor which invests it with a kind of tragic horror. In the next chapter the author writes:— “To believe in the existence of the _pieuvre_ one must have seen it. Compared to it the ancient hydras were insignificant. Orpheus, Homer, and Hesiod imagined only the chimæra:—Providence created the devil-fish. If terror was the object of its creation, it is perfection.