ALTHOUGH dignified by the name of a fish, the cuttle fish has nothing in common with the finny inhabitants of the sea, save that its existence is passed beneath the surface of the water. It stands alone, apart from all living creatures, with scarcely a point of resemblance to any of them, its nearest relations being, perhaps, the sea anemones—those lovely inhabitants of pools among rocks. Nature would seem to have created the octopus in an idle moment, in order to show how she could diverge from her regular course, and turn out a creature with a multiplicity of arms, without body or legs, and with its head in the middle of its stomach. As usual, she succeeded to perfection, but was so horrified with the monster she had made that she threw it into the sea, and endowed it with a diabolical disposition. The octopus resembles an ogre dwelling in its cave, conscious that its distorted shape will not bear the light, and stretching out its arms studded with suckers to grasp and draw down to its mouth any living thing that passes within its reach. The cuttle fish varies in size from the squid, beloved by gourmands who dwell on the shores of the Mediterranean, to the monster octopus who throws his arms round boats and drags them to the bottom. Some, indeed, in the Indian seas, are reported to grow to a size that renders them formidable even to ships, wrapping them in its embrace and dragging the sailors from the deck or shrouds. Even allowing for exaggeration, there can be little doubt that enormous specimens are occasionally met with, and that these would be formidable to small vessels. Bodies have been cast ashore whose arms have measured thirty feet in length, and these could well pluck a sailor from the deck of a ship. On our own shores they are, happily, never met with of formidable size, but comparatively large ones are encountered not far south; for it may be taken that the desperate struggle described by Victor Hugo in “The Toilers of the Sea” was at least not considered by him to be impossible, and that he had heard from fishermen of the existence of creatures as large as the one he described. The octopus appears almost insensible to pain, and the hacking off of one or more of its tentacles does not seem to cause it any inconvenience. Its body—or rather its stomach—is its only vital part, and even this must be almost cut into pieces before it will relinquish the hold it has obtained of a prey. The beak of a parrot is the last thing one would expect to find in the centre of these waving tentacles, and Nature apparently placed it there as the crowning effort in the work of construction of this monster.

Among birds, beasts, and fishes we may seek in vain for a prototype of the octopus. To find one we must go to man, and we shall find that, in his way, the professional money-lender bears a close resemblance to this creature. The waving arms, that by their resemblance to great seaweeds lull a passing fish into a sense of security, are represented in the case of the money-lender by flattering and unctuous advertisements, which, catching the eye of the unwary, persuade him that money is to be had for asking, upon terms to suit all pockets; but, as in the case of the octopus, once the suckers catch hold, there is no escape; nearer and nearer the victim is drawn, in spite of his struggles, to the parrot mouth that will tear him to pieces, and swallow up him and his belongings. The analogy is in all ways extremely close, and yet the man who would shudder at the thought of entering a cave in the depth of whose waters the octopus is lurking, will enter the professional money-lender’s den with an unmoved countenance and an even pulse. Happily, there is every reason for supposing that the fish which form the staple of the diet of the octopus suffer less in the process of destruction than does the victim of the money-lender. Fish are certainly almost, if not entirely, insensible to pain, and there is no reason to suppose that they are gifted with strong powers of imagination; it may therefore be believed that although a fish may struggle to escape from the grip of the tentacle, it feels none of the horror that seizes a human victim when once grasped by one of the larger species, and that its doom is hidden from it until the savage beak seizes it, and at once puts an end to its existence.

While man can to a certain extent enter into the feelings of a large proportion of the animal creation, it is beyond his power to imagine himself an octopus, or to get himself en rapport with its thoughts. Has it any higher impulses? Is it naturally cruel, or does it view its own methods and conduct from a strictly business point? Does it persuade itself that it is an estimable character? Is it in its own private circle affectionate and domesticated? Has it the power of discussing passing events with its congeners, and exchanging views as to the flavour of the various fish that form its diet, or as to advantageous spots for ambush? We can answer none of these questions. It certainly has but a small chance of leading a higher life. The subterranean world it sees around it is full of strife and destruction. “The large fish eat the smaller fish, and so on ad infinitum.” It only plays the same game as those around it, but by different methods, and there is no reason, because those methods are repugnant to us, that the octopus should be of the same opinion. Man is singularly intolerant in such matters. He himself kills the creatures he requires for food either by knocking them on the head, by cutting their throats, or by shooting them. Fish he captures either with nets or with a hook which sticks into their mouth or throat. And yet he criticises severely the methods of the animal creation. He dislikes the spider because like a fisherman it catches its prey in nets. He shudders at the cat because it plays with its victim just as the angler does. He is shocked because the octopus lies in wait for its prey and lassoes it as it passes. There is, in fact, no pleasing man, and he is shocked at all methods of killing, even at that most closely resembling those which he himself employs in slaying the creatures on which he feeds. We fear that there is a great deal of humbug about human susceptibilities.

Some of the cuttle fish are large manufacturers of ink. These, instead of anchoring themselves to the bottom, float near the surface, and their chance of obtaining food would be small were it not for their power of ejecting ink, and thus clouding the water and veiling themselves from sight—a habit which also affords them a method of escape when themselves attacked by the shark or other formidable enemy. This method is not unknown to man, and several well-known instances might be adduced of public men who, after having by loose assertions brought a formidable opponent down upon them, escape under a cloud of misleading words, phrases, and explanations that explain nothing, and retractions that leave the matter as it was before. Seeing that the peculiar variety of ink secreted by the cuttle fish is of a very valuable kind, it is somewhat remarkable that no enterprising manufacturer has as yet taken the matter in hand and established an aqueous farm for the breeding and rearing of cuttle fish. Indian ink and sepia are both so valuable that such an enterprise ought to pay handsome profits, and if the oyster can be cultivated, why not the cuttle fish? It would, of course, be necessary that the retaining walls of the gigantic aquarium indicated should be impervious to the passing of cuttle fish even in their earliest stage. Otherwise the proprietors would be liable very speedily to be indicted as a nuisance by the lodging-house keepers and owners of bathing machines of the nearest sea-side watering places. But this could doubtless be effected, and then no argument could be adduced that the cuttle fish should necessarily be a nuisance to their neighbours that would not equally apply to the wild beasts at a menagerie. In the latter case one occasionally breaks out and causes consternation, and, possibly, damage, and even if an octopus should do the same there could be no very valid ground for complaint. As the squid when cooked furnishes a somewhat gelatinous food not altogether dissimilar to calf’s head, it is probable that the flesh of the larger varieties might be utilised for the manufacture of mock turtle, and another source of revenue would, therefore, be open to their breeders. It is clear from these remarks that the cuttle fish has not hitherto received the careful consideration that it deserves, and the dislike we feel for its form and habits has blinded us to the benefits that might with culture and domestication be derived from it.