My deceased friend John Keast Lord gives in his book, “The Naturalist in British Columbia,” some particulars of the dimensions attained by the octopus in North-Western America. He writes:—“The octopus, as seen on our own coasts (of England), although even here called a ‘man-sucker’ by the fishermen, is a mere Tom Thumb—a tiny dwarf—as compared with the Brobdingnagian proportions he attains in the sunny bays and long inland canals of Vancouver’s Island, as well as on the mainland. These places afford lurking-dens, strongholds, and natural sea-nurseries, where the octopus grows to an enormous size, fattens, and wages war with insatiable ferocity on all and everything it can catch. The size, of course, varies. I have seen and measured the arm five feet long, and as large at the base, where it joins the central disc, as my wrist.” He adds that the Indians, when spearing them for food, take care to keep them at a distance till they have stabbed them to death; knowing that if an octopus were once to get some of its huge arms over the side of the canoe, it could as easily haul it over as a child could upset a basket. But we know that a canoe is very crank, and easily upset. I have often been asked whether an octopus of the ordinary size can really be dangerous to bathers. Decidedly “Yes,” in certain situations. The octopus would not seize a man for the purpose of devouring him; nor do I believe that the act would be prompted by a deliberate intention to drown him, that his dead body might become an attractive bait for crabs, which are the animal’s favourite food; but rather by an instinctive desire to lay hold on anything moving within reach. The holding power of its numerous suckers is enormous. It is almost impossible forcibly to detach it from its adhesion to a rock or the flat bottom of a tank; and if a large one happened to fix one or more of its strong, tough arms on the leg of a swimmer whilst the others held firmly to a rock, I doubt if the man could disengage himself under water by mere strength, before being exhausted. Fortunately, it can be made to relax its hold by grasping it tightly round the “throat” (if I may so call it), and it may be well that this should be known. That men are occasionally drowned by these creatures is, unfortunately, a fact too well attested. In August, 1867, the _Genoa Gazette_ mentioned that a carter of Sampierdarena, who had gone to bathe near the reef of San Andria, was seized by an octopus, which, in spite of all his efforts, dragged him under water and drowned him. Not one of the bathers who witnessed the occurrence dared to go to the assistance of the unfortunate man.