In May, 1873, it was found that some young lump-fish (_Cyclopterus lumpus_), were mysteriously disappearing from one of the tanks. Almost daily there was a fresh and inexplicable vacancy in the gradually diminishing family circle, and morning after morning a handbill might have been issued:—“Missing! Lost, stolen, or strayed, a young ‘lump-sucker,’ rather below the middle size, and enormously stout; had on a bright blue coat, with several rows of buttons on it, and a waistcoat of lighter colour. Whoever will give such information as shall lead to the discovery of the same, or produce satisfactory evidence of his death, will relieve the troubled minds of the curators!” “What on earth can have become of them?” “Where can they be?” were the questions each attendant asked in vain of another. If they had died they would have been found in the tank, for there were no crabs there that could have eaten them; they could not have burrowed in the shingle, for it was not deep enough; and, with their obesity of form, they could no more have leaped out of the tank than Mr. Wardell’s fat boy in “Pickwick” could have jumped a five-barred gate. Here was a puzzle! One by one they were lost to sight, as regularly and unaccountably as pair after pair of Lieutenant Charles Seaforth’s breeches disappeared from his bedroom at Tappington, as related in the “Ingoldsby Legends.” One morning, however, Mr. Lawler, one of the staff, on going to count our young friends, found an interloper amongst them. “Who put this octopus in No. 27 tank?” he inquired of the keepers. “Octopus, sir? no one! Well, if he ain’t bin and got over out of the next tank!” And this was just the fact. The marauding rascal had occasionally issued from the water in his tank, and clambered up the rocks, and over the wall into the next one; there he had helped himself to a young lump-fish, and, having devoured it, returned demurely to his own quarters by the same route, with well-filled stomach and contented mind. This was not very difficult for him to accomplish, for the partition between the two tanks is only about a foot above the surface of the water. Having accidentally, or otherwise, discovered that there was a preserve of live stock suitable to his palate next door, he paid frequent nocturnal poaching visits to it, and, after clearing up every remnant of his meal, regularly slunk home before day-light; until, like most criminals, becoming careless by frequently escaping detection, he, on the last occasion, indulged at supper-time in an inordinate gorge, and slept under his neighbour’s porch, instead of going home to bed.