“The traveller who, when treading the shores of the coasts and islands of the Ægean, observes, as he can scarcely fail to do, the innumerable remains of the hard parts of cuttle-fishes piled literally in heaps along the sands—or, when watching the Greek fishermen draw their nets, marks the number of these creatures mixed up with the abundance of true fishes taken and equally prized as articles of food by the captors—can at once understand why the naturalists of ancient Greece should have treated so fully of the history of the cephalopoda, and its poets have made allusions to them as familiar objects. One of the most striking spectacles at night on the coasts of the Ægean is to see the numerous torches glancing along the shores, and reflected by the still and clear sea, borne by poor fishermen paddling as silently as possible over the rocky shallows in search of the cuttle-fish, which, when seen lying beneath the waters in wait for his prey, they dexterously spear, ere the creature has time to dart with the rapidity of an arrow from the weapon about to transfix his soft but firm body. As in ancient times, these molluscs constitute, now, a valuable part of the food of the poor, by whom they are chiefly used. We can ourselves bear testimony to their excellence. When well beaten, to render the flesh tender, before being dressed, and then cut up into morsels and served in a savoury brown stew, they make a dish by no means to be despised, excellent in both substance and flavour. A modern Lycian dinner, in which stewed cuttle-fish formed the first, and roast porcupine the second course, would scarcely fail to be relished by an unprejudiced epicure in search of novelty.” I have tasted the octopus, sepia, and loligo, and am quite of Professor Forbes’s opinion that they are very palatable when really well cooked. They are all the better for being dressed with made gravy, but may be eaten plainly boiled, and served with egg-sauce. They are apt, however, to be very tough unless slowly simmered, and should first be well beaten with a wooden mallet or the flat of a cleaver. At Gibraltar, the Spanish fishermen may frequently be observed engaged in softening an octopus by dashing it several times with great violence on the stone landing steps at the fish-market.[25] The flavour is not unlike that of the skate, or the white part of a scallop. A writer in the “Echo” called the flesh of the octopus “a sort of marine tripe, the chief merit of which lay in the sauce in which it was served.” I am inclined to agree with him. To many persons who have not, like the Greeks, been accustomed from childhood to regard it as a delicacy, the appearance of an octopus, alive or dead, is very revolting; and I admit that its boiled carcase, put before one in unadorned simplicity, is not appetizing.