The Curator of the Havre Aquarium describes an attack by congers on an octopus which he had thrown into their tank. As soon as the latter touched the bottom it examined every corner of the stone-work. The moment it perceived a conger it seemed to feel instinctively the danger which menaced it, and endeavoured to conceal its presence by stretching itself along a rock, the colour of which it immediately assumed. Finding this useless, and seeing that it was discovered, it changed its tactics, and shot backward, in quick retreat, leaving behind it a long black trail of turbid water, formed by the discharge of its ink. Then it fixed itself to a rock, with all its arms surrounding and protecting its body, and presenting on all exposed sides a surface furnished with suckers. In this position it awaited the attack of its enemies. A conger approached, searched with its snout for a vulnerable place, and, having found one, seized with its teeth a mouthful of the living flesh. Then, straightening itself out in the water, it turned round and round with giddy rapidity, until the arm was, with a violent wrench, torn away from the body of the victim. Each bite of a conger cost the unfortunate creature a limb, and, at length, nothing remained but its dismembered body, which was finally devoured;—some dog-fishes, attracted by the fray, partaking of the feast. I have always refused to permit so shocking a scene to be repeated at the Brighton Aquarium. The Havre experiment has taught us all that is to be learned from it concerning the mode of attack of the conger, and the octopod’s strategy of defence. That the flesh of the latter is a favourite food of congers, I have repeatedly proved by watching the eagerness with which they will rend limb from limb, and devour the body of a dead octopus to which I sometimes treat them after removing such portions as may be required for dissection and preservation. An octopus is sometimes, though rarely, severely injured in battle by one of its own species. On one occasion when a newly-arrived specimen was put in a tank with others which had dwelt there for some time, these old habitués made a fierce onslaught on it, and the new-comer had one of its arms torn away. It would certainly have been killed if one of the attendants had not rescued and removed it. Aristotle says that the octopus does not eat its congeners, and D’Orbigny endorses his opinion. Nevertheless one instance of this cannibalism has occurred in the Brighton Aquarium; and in that on the Boulevard Montmartre, Paris, in 1867, two octopuses fought and the victor devoured the vanquished.