Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/367

Rh stalk which is attached to the rock by a cement secreted by the parent, and to which each egg is separately attached, like a mass of bananas on its stalk, only much more closely packed, the number being immense; an octopus will produce in one laying from forty to fifty thousand. Mr. Lee describes one that he had under observation in an aquarium, which he says "would pass one of her arms beneath the hanging bunches of her eggs, and, dilating the membrane on each side of it into a boat-shaped hollow, would gather and hold them in, as in a trough or cradle. Then she would caress and gently rub them, occasionally turning toward them the mouth of her flexible exhalent and locomotor tube, which resembles the nozzle of a hose-pipe, and direct upon them a jet of water." The object of the syringing process was probably to free the eggs from parasites, or to prevent the growth of confervæ upon them. At the end of five weeks some of the eggs were taken from the nest for observation under the microscope, which showed that the young octopods were already alive and freely swimming within the shell; and most extraordinary was it to see that these immature creatures exhibited the characteristic changes of color at that early



stage of development, flushing red apparently with anger when disturbed. The period of incubation is about fifty days, and during all that time the mother octopus brooded her eggs with the tenderest care; so that the observer almost ceased to look upon her in the light of a "devil-fish," and recognized that at least the maternal instinct was not dependent for its development upon external beauty.

When the young octopus emerges from the egg it is about the size of a large flea, but has none of the arms developed; these appear simply as "rudimentary conical excrescences, having points of hair-like fineness arranged in the form of an eight-rayed coronet upon the head." The amiable disposition of all female devil-fish is not perhaps equal to that of the one described above; but it is not an unusual event for