Everyone who loves and studies animals knows that each differs from others of its species, in its habits and little ways, as distinctly as children, and men, and women are diverse in character and disposition. The horses you have owned, the dogs you have loved, your cats, parrots, and even your pet cage-birds and little white mice, have possessed widely varying characters and idiosyncrasies. Fishes, the crustacea, and even the octopods are not excepted from this individuality. The hen octopus in question, whilst on sentry duty guarding her undeveloped progeny, assumed a position and attitude totally different from that adopted by her predecessor in maternal joys. The syringing of her eggs with a current of water from the syphon tube was repeated by her; but she never cradled them, as did the other, in the expanded membrane of a limb. Her usual posture was with the under portion of her body presented to them, her eight arms turned completely back, exposing their under surface armed with their battery of suckers, the muzzles of the latter pointing in every direction, and the tip of the hard, horny beak, just discernible. The fine ends of the arms might sometimes be seen gently winding amongst the clusters of eggs as tenderly and lovingly as a father’s fingers through the tresses of a darling child, but there was no evident nursing in this case. An octopus about to spawn, like some birds in search of a nesting-place, seeks the most retired nook she can find in which to deposit her eggs. The elasticity of her body enables her to squeeze herself through a very small orifice; and, therefore, the narrower the entry to her den the more suitable is it for her purpose, because the better adapted for defence against enemies and intruders. A curious instance of the choice of such a nesting-place came under my notice in March, 1874. Some fishermen, whilst dredging in the Channel off Brighton, brought up an earthen jar or carboy, which would hold about two gallons. It was covered with serpulæ, &c., and was forthwith taken to the Aquarium. There it was discovered that it contained an octopus and her eggs. The neck of the jar was only two inches in diameter: the octopus was a fully-grown specimen. The young octopus fresh from the egg is of about the size of a large flea, and when irritated is of nearly the same colour. It is very different in appearance from an adult individual of the same species. At first sight it is more like a _sepia_, without its tentacles, than an octopus. The arms, which will afterwards be four or five times the length of its body, are so rudimentary as to be even shorter in proportion than the pedal arms of the cuttle-fish, and appear only as little conical excrescences, having points of hair-like fineness, and arranged in the form of an eight-rayed coronet around the head.