The Staxx

Lee, Henry. The Octopus: or, the “Devil-Fish” of...

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 02:04:00 -0400

Lee, Henry. The Octopus: or, the “Devil-Fish” of fact or fiction. London : Chapman and Hall. 1875. Print.

[This book was recommended to me by Jacques Yves Cousteau in his novel The Silent World.]

When I accepted the position of Naturalist of the Brighton Aquarium, after the death of my valued friend John Keast Lord, it became my pleasant duty to watch and record events and circumstances connected with the habits and development of the denizens of the tanks. I have always endeavoured to observe carefully, to describe faithfully, to record facts rather than to propound theories, and to relate what I have seen and learned in language comprehensible by all.

— Henry Lee

Brighton Aquarium,

August, 1875

More than 2200 years ago — nearly four centuries before...

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 02:03:00 -0400

More than 2200 years ago — nearly four centuries before the Evangelists wrote their imperishable histories of the events on which the faith of Christendom is based — Aristotle, the celebrated naturalist of Stageira, in Macedonia, recorded observations of the habits and reproduction of the Octopus which clearly show that he was more intimately acquainted with its mode of life than any writer of a later date between his day and ours. The animal has been long known to naturalists. The ancient Egyptians figured it amongst their hieroglyphics; whilst on a journey up to Nubia, up the Nile, in January, 1875, Mr. Eugenius Birch, the architect of the Brighton Aquarium visited the temple of Bayr-el-Bahree, Thebes (date, 1700 BC), the entrance to which had been deeply buried beneath the light, wind-drifted sand accumulated during many centuries. By order of the Khedive access was recently obtained to its interior by the excavation and removal of this deep deposit; and amongst the hieroglyphics on the walls were found, between the zig-zag horizontal lines which represent water, figures of various fishes so accurately portrayed as to be easily identified. With them was the outline of a squid 14 inches long. As this temple is 500 miles from the delta of the Nile it is remarkable that nearly all the fishes there represented are of marine species.

It is an old belief, sanctioned by Aristotle, that the broad...

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 02:01:00 -0400

It is an old belief, sanctioned by Aristotle, that the broad membranous expansions of the argonaut’s two arms, are hoisted by the animal as sails; and that in calm weather it sits in its boat-like shell and floats over the smooth surface of the sea, steering and paddling with its other arms; and that, when danger threatens, it lowers its masts, and sinks beneath the waves. This pretty fable was exploded in 1837 by Captain Sander Rang, an officer in the French navy, and Port-captain at Algiers, who carefully followed up some experiments communicated to him by Mrs. Power, a French lady then residing at Messina; and the structure and purpose of the two flattened limbs is now clearly understood. Instead of floating in its pleasure-boat over the sea, the argonaut ordinarily crawls along the bottom, carrying its shell above it, keel uppermost; and the broad extremities of the two arms are not hoisted as sails, nor allowed, when at rest, to dangle over the side of the “boat,” but are used as a kind of hood by which the animal retains the shell in its proper position, as a man bearing a load on his shoulders holds it with his hands. When it comes to the surface, or progresses by swimming instead of walking, it does so in the same manner as the octopus; namely, by the forcible expulsion of water from its funnel-like tube. This “paper-sailor,” then, whom the poets have regarded as endowed with so much grace and beauty, and living in luxurious ease, is but a fine lady octopus after all. Turn her out of her handsome residence, and, instead of the fairy skimmer of the seas, you have before you what Mr. Mantalini would call a “dem’d, damp, moist, unpleasant body,” like that of her weird and sprawling relative.

OCTOPODS I HAVE KNOWN The first octopus received at the Brighton...

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 01:59:00 -0400

OCTOPODS I HAVE KNOWN

The first octopus received at the Brighton Aquarium was caught in a lobster-pot at Eastbourne in October 1872, and great was the joy that reigned in “London-by-the-sea.” For in the state of public feeling then existing, an aquarium without an octopus was like a plum pudding without plums. Share-holders might construct a handsome building, and stock its magnificently gigantic tanks with a variety of most interesting fishes, but fashion and public opinion demanded of them a “devil-fish.” The new octopus became “the rage.” Visitors jostled each other, and waited their turn to obtain a peep at him — often a tantalizing exercise of patience, for the picturesque rock-work in the tanks provided so many hiding places, that, until these were partially filled with cement, the popular favorite only occasionally condescended to show himself.

THE DEVIL-FISH OF FICTION AND OF FACT In Victor Hugo’s...

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 01:58:00 -0400

THE DEVIL-FISH OF FICTION AND OF FACT

In Victor Hugo’s famous story, “The Toilers of the Sea,” the octopus’ 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, tapering thongs 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. The cups themselves, by their internal mechanism for air exhaustion, and consequent pressure of the outer atmosphere, adhere firmly to any substance to which they are applied, whether stone, fish, crustacean, or flesh of man; but in the octopus they have no power to puncture or lacerate the skin, or to cause blood to flow. They are merely pneumatically prehensile organs, by which the animal’s prey is caught and held; not by “harpooning,” as the novelist supposes, but by their atmospheric adhesion to the surface of its body.

When experimenting on the holding force of an octopus I have allowed it to fix its suckers firmly on my arm and the back of my hand, and by pretending to try to pull them away from its grasp have caused it to exert its utmost power of resistance and retention. The only effect of this has been that the vacuum produced an almost indistinguishable circular mark, corresponding with the edge of the larger discs, and not nearly so distinct as would be caused by the application of a glass tube to the skin, and the partial exhaustion of the air in it by drawing it from the other end by the mouth and tongue.

“The ‘pieuvre’ has no muscular organisation,...

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 01:56:00 -0400

“The ‘pieuvre’ has no muscular organisation, no menacing cry, no breastplate, no horn, no dart, no tail with which to hold or bruise, no cutting fins, or wings with claws, no prickles, no sword, no electric discharge, no venom, no talons, no beak, no teeth… It has no bones, no blood, no flesh. It is soft and flabby. It is an empty flask; a skin with nothing inside it. Its eight tentacles may be turned inside out, like the hands of a glove. It has a single orifice, which is both vent and mouth.”

So says the novelist. The naturalist knows that it has a complete and perfect muscular organisation; muscles which serve to retract and depress the funnel, bundles of strong muscles passing along the arms and branching to each of the suckers which gives to the animal its power of adhesion, and a mass of muscles of such strength to work the powerful beak, that if anyone, believing the fictionist, were to place his finger in the small circular orifice in the centre of the base of the arms, he would possibly learn practically that it is not “an empty flask with nothing in it.” For just within the oral cavity lie, retracted and hidden, but ready for use when wanted, a pair of horny mandibles which bite vertically, like the beak of a parrot or turtle, except that the lower mandible is the longest and overlaps the upper, and are so hard that they can not only tear the softer animals the octopus is able to catch, but also break up the shells of lobsters, crabs, and mussels, which are its usual food.

The common cuttle-fish (Sepia officinalis), (often called by...

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 01:54:00 -0400

The common cuttle-fish (Sepia officinalis), (often called by sailors the “scuttle”), though flabby and clammy in death, is a lovely object when alive. Unlike, the skulking, hiding octopus, but equally rapacious, it loves the day-light and the freedom of the open sea. Its predatory acts are not those of a concealed and ambushed brigand lying in wait behind a rock, or peeping furtively from within the gloomy shadow of a cave; but it may better be compared to the war-like Comanche vidette, seated motionless on his horse, and scanning from some elevated knoll a wide expanse of prairie, in readiness to swoop upon a weak or unarmed foe. Poised near the surface of the water, like a hawk in the air, the sepia moves gently to and fro in its tank by graceful undulations of its lateral fins, —an exquisite play of colour occationally taking place over its beautifully barred and mottled back. When thus tranquil, its eight pedal arms are usually brought close together, and droop in front of its head, like the trunk of an elephant, shortened; its two longer tentacular arms being coiled up within the others, and unseen. Only when some small fish is given to it, as food, is its facility of rapid motion displayed. Then, quickly as a kingfisher darts upon a minnow, it pounces on its prey, enfolds it in its fatal “cuddle” or embrace, and retires to a recess of its abode to tear it piece-meal with its horny beak, and rend it into minutest shreds with its jagged tongue. In shallow water, however, it will often rest for hours on the bottom, after a hearty meal, looking very much like a sleepy tortoise. The cuttlefishes are so voracious that fisherman regard them as unwelcome visitors. Some localities on our own coasts are occasionally so infested by them that the drift-netting has to be abandoned, in consequence of their devouring the fish, or rendering them unsalable by tearing them with their beaks as they hang in the meshes.

Specimens of another of the Sepiidae, the diminutive Sepiola (S....

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 01:52:00 -0400

Specimens of another of the Sepiidae, the diminutive Sepiola (S. Rondeletii) — a veritable Liliputian among cuttles — are sometimes caught in shrimp-nets, and brought to the Aquarium. The mantle-sac enclosing the body of this little Tom Thumb cephalopod is about an inch in length, and in shape like a short widebore mortar. The large goggle eyes seem to be out of all proportion to the size of their owner; but they are, apparently, “all the better to see with,” either to watch for a tender young shrimp coming within arms reach, or to perceive an approaching enemy. Now and again specimens of the “little squid” (Loligo media) are brought in. Their movements are very graceful and pleasing. They are gregarious, like other squids, and keep close together. By the action of their tail-fins, they can either “go a-head” or “turn astern;” and it is very interesting to watch their manoeuvres. We once had in one of the tanks four of these “little squids” (which are only about four inches long), and I was much amused by seeing them perform, in a most ludicrous manner, the quadrille figure called La Trenise. Three of them ranged themselves side by side, and advanced towards, and retired from a solitary one, who, for some reason, was not received into their rank, but faced them. When they withdrew, stern first, to the back of the tank, the lonely one followed them up with a pas seul.

These “little squids” are impudently voracious. I have seen one in single combat with a young dog-fish about four inches long. At first I thought the fish was the aggressor, and had seized one of the tentacular arms of the little Loligo as a good substitute for a worm; but it was soon apparent that the affray had been provoked by the carnivorous cephalopod, and that the puppy-fish would get the worst of it ; —so they were separated.

The spawn of the squid (Loligo vulgaris) consists of dozens of...

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 01:47:00 -0400

The spawn of the squid (Loligo vulgaris) consists of dozens of semi-transparent, gelatinous, slender, cylindrical sheaths, about four or five inches long, each containing many ova embedded in it, and all springing from on common centre, and resembling a mop without a handle. I have never seen these “sea-mops” attached to anything, and the pelagic habits of the calamaries render it probable that they are left floating on the surface of the sea.

. Camden On The Coast Of Maine And Its Advantages For Summer...

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 00:51:11 -0400

. Camden On The Coast Of Maine And Its Advantages For Summer Homes. Providence, R.I. : J.R. Prescott, 1900, c1899. Print.

Your Summer Home! The object of this book is not to exploit...

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 00:49:31 -0400

Your Summer Home!

The object of this book is not to exploit Camden as a summer resort, but to help those who are trying to solve the problem of a summer home. Here is an ideal seashore location, an unspoiled spot, out of the beaten line of travel, yet easily accessible to the rest of the world. It equals Bar harbor in picturesque variety of scenery and is six hours nearer Boston.

There are building sites suited to every taste. Those who prefer the seashore will find five miles of coast, picturesquely indented. Those who best like sightly hills will find them in abundance, while those whose preference is for wild land or ledges will find plenty to select from. Still further inland there are the mountain lakes with their irregular shores and attractive islands.

Any of the summer residents, or builders, or real estate agents, whose names are mentioned in the foregoing pages, would probably respond to any request for information regarding land. As this book is not written in the interest of any person or locality, the publisher cannot make any special recommendations. The foregoing views, however indicate the attractions of the various localities, and enable one to judge of their respective merits.

Lying midway along the irregular coast of Maine, is the broad...

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 00:35:21 -0400

Lying midway along the irregular coast of Maine, is the broad expanse of water known as Penobscot Bay. Hundreds of islands dot its vast area, while its shores are bounded by lofty hills terminating in mountain ranges. At the base of one of the most picturesque of these mountain groups lies the village of Camden, hemmed in by the mountains, and looking directly out to the ocean in one direction, and across the bay in another. Experienced travellers pronounce the entrance to this harbor equal in picturesque grandeur to many of the most noted Norwegian fiords. An attractive wharf adds to the pleasure of arrival, and the absence of hackmen’s cries and similar annoyances is noted with satisfaction. Camden is an unspoiled spot, a fact which is noticed the moment one lands there.

Lovers of nature will find much to admire in Camden besides its...

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 00:33:35 -0400

Lovers of nature will find much to admire in Camden besides its mountains and seashore. The botanist will find a rich profusion of wild flowers, ferns and other flora. Our illustrations sow the wonderful beauty of the Camden trees and shrubbery. Camden is noted for the great variety of berries found there. Wild strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, huckleberries and blueberries grow in abundance.

A Professional Man’s Estimate of Camden We supplement the...

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 00:27:38 -0400

A Professional Man’s Estimate of Camden

We supplement the appreciative letters of Lyman Abbott and Professor Genung, by one from Dr. F. Forchheimer, a well-known specialist of Cincinnati, who with his family spent the summer of 1899 at the “Anchorage” cottage. His estimate of Camden may interest those who are looking for a summer home.

Cincinnati, Ohio, Dec. 26, 1899.

It is with great pleasure that I write concerning our sojourn at Camden last summer. We have wandered much during our summer vacations, but never have we found a place which has benefitted us so much as Camden. The fine air, the beautiful scenery, the wonderful combinations of mountains with ocean, and, above all, the excellent sanitary conditions, make it a place that must be lived in to be appreciated. To those of us who live inland, exemption from summer heat is sufficient inducement to make Camden an abiding place in the summer. If added to all these excellences there is found every necessity to creature comfort, all is said that can be said in favor or a place.

Yours very truly,

F. Forchheimer.

Photo

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 00:22:52 -0400

. How To Make Good Pictures: A Guide For The Amateur...

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 17:08:02 -0400

. How To Make Good Pictures: A Guide For The Amateur Photographer. Rochester, N.Y. : Eastman Kodak Co., 1951. Print.

This new edition of How To Make Good Pictures has but one...

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 17:04:42 -0400

This new edition of How To Make Good Pictures has but one purpose — to help you get the most enjoyment, and the most satisfying results from your camera. It’s a book for everybody. Maybe you’re a grandparent… maybe a grade school student, a high school junior, a proud new mother, a busy professional man seeking an interesting hobby. Whatever your age of interests, picture taking has much to offer you — and this book provides a basic guide. This book’s approach is simple: to help you see the picture possibilities that exist all around you, and then to help you make the most of those possibilities through wise choice of viewpoint, lighting, good subject arrangement, and correct operation of your camera.

This book is definitely not a collection of professional...

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 17:01:55 -0400

This book is definitely not a collection of professional photographs. Most of the pictures were made by amateur photographers, with amateur cameras. (“Amateur,” by the way, does not mean “dub”; it is a proud word, signifying one who takes pictures for the love of it, rather than as a means of livelihood.) The pictures are good because they represent the honest, sympathetic observation of people who have learned to see their surroundings — and to record their pleasure accurately on photographic film.

Photo

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 16:58:21 -0400

This picture is better because it tells a story, the background...

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 16:56:09 -0400

This picture is better because it tells a story, the background has no pattern (although it is rather overwhelming in brightness of color), the expression and action are good, the pose is charming, and accents of red are nicely placed. If you like bright hues, you’ll prefer the color scheme in this photo. (Incidentally, the subject didn’t blow those bubbles; they were blown in by a helper, and as soon as the photographer sensed a pleasing pattern, he snapped it.)