It is a not uncommon occurrence that when an octopus is caught, it is found to have one or more of its arms shorter than the rest, and showing marks of having been amputated, and of the formation of a new growth from the old cicatrix. Several such specimens have been brought to the Brighton Aquarium; one of which was particularly interesting. Two of its arms had evidently been bitten off about four inches from the base; and out from the end of each healed stump (which, in proportion to the length of the limb, was as if a man’s arm had been amputated half-way between the shoulder and elbow) grew a slender little piece of newly-formed arm, about as large as a lady’s stiletto, or a small button-hook—in fact, just the equivalent of worthy Captain Cuttle’s iron hook, which did duty for his lost hand. It was not a specimen of the remarkable _hectocotylus_ development of the arm of the male octopus which takes place during the breeding season, but an illustrative example of the repair and restoration of a mutilated limb.[17] This reparative power is possessed by some other animals, of which the starfishes and crustacea are the most familiar instances. The lobster and the crab, if they find themselves in depressing circumstances, are addicted to malingering. They do not go so far as to commit suicide; but, stopping short of that, perpetrate a kind of demi-semi-self-immolation. In a sudden passion of fear or anger, they will sometimes fling off one or both of their large claws, and that which they thus do impulsively and in haste, they repent and repair at leisure—like the intemperate man we sometimes read of in the police news, who goes home and smashes the crockery, and, when he is able to reflect on his folly, is glad to make good the damage as quickly and as quietly as he can. The starfishes, too, as the common “five-finger” (_Uraster_), and the brittle-star (_Ophiocoma_),—which by-the-by, is not half as brittle as has been supposed—can throw off their limbs in a pet, and grow them again. But in both of these the act is voluntary, and the dismemberment complete. If the claw of a lobster or crab be severed, or wounded in any part of its length, the animal will bleed, and waste, and die of the consequent exhaustion. I have noticed that, especially in the spiny lobster or sea cray-fish (_Palinurus_), the blood flows freely many hours after death, and that when I have had occasion to remove the abdominal and caudal leaf-like appendages of a dead cray-fish for dissection and microscopical examination, the blood and serum have poured from the part where the cut has been made, and thickened on the stone slab in a firm, gelatinous sheet, of the colour and consistency of guava jelly.