The Sucker of the soft gelatinous world, was himself soft and gelatinous. Warring upon and devouring the molluscs, he himself none the less, remained mollusc, that is to say, still a mere embryon. There would be something absurd, caricatural, were it not so terrible, in this sight of a mere foetus, soft and transparent, yet cruel, raging, eager, breathing nothing but murder. For he, see you, goes not to war for the mere sake of food. He has a real passion for destroying, for destruction's sake; whenever he has gorged himself, well nigh to bursting, he will destroy still. Destitute of defensive armour, his threatening snortings disguise, but by no means quiet, his real anxiety; his real, his only safety, is an attack. He is the veritable bully of the young world; really vulnerable himself, and yet so terrible to others; he sees in everything that he meets only enemy or victim. At all risks he casts hither and thither his long arms, or rather his whip-lashes, tipped with cupping glasses, and upon enemy or victim, before the fight or the capture commences, he sends out his stupefying, paralysing effluvia. Double power. To the mechanical strength of these outstretched arms, add the magical force of that mysterious fluid, and a singularly acute hearing and quick eye. You see in all these, a creature to alarm you. What must it have been, then, when the early world so lavished its wealth of alimentation, that these monsters of the deep could feed and swell indefinitely? They have decreased now, both in number and in size. Yet, even lately, Rang tells us that he has seen them big as a hogshead; and Peron has seen them quite as large in the South Sea. The creature rolled, and snorted in the rolling wave, with a noise to terrify, to astonish, all meaner creatures. His arms, six or seven feet in length, turning, twisting, writhing, and grasping in every direction, imitated some furious pantomime, some fantastic dance of at once furious and eccentric serpents. After these matter of fact statements, it seems to me, that we should not be quite so incredulous, not quite so scornful, when we read the accounts of the old voyagers; we should not curl the lip _quite_ so insolently as we read, in Denis de Montford, that he saw a monstrous Poulpe, grasp, with his enormous arms, lash, scourge, smite, stupefy with his electric lashes a fierce and strong mastiff which, in spite of all his efforts, and his terrible howlings, had to succumb, did succumb, _did_ die in that giant and terrible embrace.