Now, let us try to conjecture the “fons et origo mali”—the source of the injury of the two lopped arms.
There lingers still amongst the fishermen of the Mediterranean a very ancient belief that the octopus when pushed by hunger will gnaw and devour portions of its arms. Aristotle knew of it, and positively contradicted it; but a fallacy once planted is hard to eradicate. You may cut it down, and apparently destroy it, root and branch, but its seeds are scattered abroad, and spring up elsewhere and in unexpected places. Accordingly we find Oppian, more than five centuries later, disseminating the same old notion, and comparing this habit of the animal with that of the bear obtaining nutriment from his paws by sucking them during his hibernation.
When wintry skies o’er the black ocean frown,
And clouds hang low with ripen’d storms o’er-grown,
Close in the shelter of some vaulted cave
The soft-skinn’d prekes their porous bodies save.
But forc’d by want, while rougher seas they dread,
On their own feet, necessitous, are fed.
But when returning spring serenes the skies,
Nature the growing parts anew supplies.