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.
My notes of observations have, from time to time, appeared in the Natural History columns of
Land and Water, and have been honoured by frequent quotation in the Times and other
newspapers. Grateful for the kind reception accorded to them in their original form, I re-
publish them with considerable additions. They have, in fact, been almost entirely re-written.
I venture to hope that they may be interesting to the public, and of some little value to
science.

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.

[viii]

With excellent opportunities of studying the habits and movements of living cephalopods,
and with dead specimens of these animals on the table before me, I have followed, scalpel in
hand, the minute description of their anatomy given by Professor Owen, in his masterly
treatise in the “Cyclopædia of Anatomy,” and by De Ferussac and D’Orbigny in their splendid
monograph on the same subject; the two great sources from which almost all, if not all,
subsequent writers have drawn much of their information. Quotations from other authors will
be found duly noted.

I am indebted to my friend Mr. Thomas Davidson, F.R.S., &c., for the beautiful portrait of the
Octopus, which forms the frontispiece to this volume; to Mrs. Edward Harris for the drawing
of its eggs (fig. 6); to Miss Gertrude Woodward for that of its tongue (fig. 4); and to Messrs.
West and Co., and Mr. Charles A. Ferrier, for the care they have respectively bestowed on the
lithographing and engraving of the illustrations.

HENRY LEE.

Brighton Aquarium,
August, 1875.

[ix]