One night these two individuals left their tank, and started in opposite directions on a voyage of discovery. One went east, the other went west; and, as if by preconcerted plan, neither was content merely to cross the frontier and visit his nearest neighbours, but both passed through, or over, one intervening tank, and settled down amongst the tribes beyond. One of them found himself in a Brobdingnag of crabs—a colony of giants too strong to be successfully invaded even by an armada of octopods. If he had arrived at Lilliput instead—a tank inhabited by pigmy crustaceans—he would soon have depopulated it, by clutching in his hateful embrace more victims _per diem_ than ever an unwelcome, foul-mouthed dragon of old demanded as his daily dole of youths and maidens, to satisfy his inconvenient preference for their flesh as his daintiest dish. The other traveller found his way into Lobsterdom, and putting on a bold front, proceeded to attack the chief. The lobster, though evidently alarmed, “showed fight,” and the intruder was obliged to retreat, and seek refuge in a cranny of the rock-work. Although the lobster which bore the brunt of the attack was a very large one, I was at the time surprised that it so decisively vanquished the invader as to save from destruction the other smaller specimens of its kind, which were its companions. For it is an old notion, still generally believed by fishermen, that if an octopus approaches a “pot,” or “stalker,” in which are lobsters that have been entrapped, they will cast off their claws, and become literally sick from fright. In his pleasant book, “Sub-tropical Rambles,” Mr. Nicholas Pike, United States Consul at Mauritius, mentions that advantage is there taken by the native fishermen of the antipathy and instinctive fear with which the crustacea regard their enemy, the octopus (called by the Creoles, the “ourite,” by the European residents, the “cat-fish,”), to lure the former from their holes. A long arm of the octopus is suspended at the entrance, and no sooner does the lobster or cray-fish catch sight of the dreaded weapon covered with suckers, than away he rushes in terror, and is soon caught by a noose of split bamboo firmly fixed over his tail.