His description of the seizure of Gilliatt by the pieuvre shows that he was tolerably well acquainted with its habits, mode of attack, and external form. The half terrifying, half disgusting grasp of one of the animal’s sucker-furnished arms, “supple as leather, tough as steel, cold as night;” the issuing of a second from the crevice, “like a tongue from out a mouth,” and the successive application of a third, fourth, and fifth, to various parts of his body, whilst the other three retained firm hold of the rock, is powerfully, and, so far, correctly, depicted, if highly-coloured. And, although, when the octopus desires to alter the position of the suckers and to change its hold, it generally effects that by an instantaneous relaxation and renewal of the suction, by protrusion or retraction of the muscular piston within each, yet the gliding of the cupping discs over the surface of a man’s wet skin is also in accordance with possibility, for I have tested it with a living octopus on my own arm. This will be easily understood by anyone who has watched the movements of the entomostracous parasites of fishes. The so-called river-louse, Argulus foliaceus, which infests all freshwater fishes, can run over their scales without loosening the hold of the two great suckers with which it is furnished; and others which, like Caligus and Lepeotheirus, have a water-tight carapace with a flexible margin, are able to move rapidly over the body of the fish in the same way.
In his relation of the manner in which the octopus captures its prey, the novelist is therefore substantially in accord with nature. The points on which he chiefly errs, are—
1st. The structure, use, capability, and effect on its victim, of its arms and suckers.
2nd. Its general organisation.
3rd. Its mode of progression when swimming.
4th. The manner in which it devours and digests its food.
The arms are described as “encircling Gilliatt’s whole body, cutting into his ribs like cord; ... forming a ligature about his stomach; ... enfolding and constricting his diaphragm like straps; producing such compression that he could hardly breathe; ... his body almost disappearing under the folds of this horrible bandage; its knots garotting him, its contact paralysing him.” The suckers are represented as being “like so many lips trying to drink your blood; ... they bury themselves to the depth of an inch in the flesh of their prisoner; ... on contact with them your muscles swell, the fibres are wrenched, and your blood gushes forth, and mixes horribly with the lymph of the mollusc.”
The whole of this is fallacious. The arms of the octopus are not used as weapons of constriction, compression, or suffocation. They are eight radiating, supple, tapering thongs, in ordinary specimens from eighteen inches to two feet long, on each of which are mounted, in a double row, numerous sucking discs, which decrease in size towards the tips of the limbs, and act as so many dry cupping-glasses. There are normally about 240 of these suckers on each arm, making a total of about 1,920. I have counted more in some individuals. M. Hugo gives their number as “fifty on each arm, 400 in all;” so on this point he very much understates his case.
