68 Mr. Broderip on the 



the sides of the boat, are employed as oars, and occasionally serve to steer 

 by. In order to rise from the bottom of the ocean, for the purpose of 

 sailing on the surface, the Nautilus discharges a quantity of water from 

 its shell, by which it becomes lighter than the surrounding medium, and, 

 of course, rises to the top. Numbers of these curious animals may be 

 seen sailing about and diverting themselves on the smooth surface of the 

 sea; but if any danger approaches, or the winds begin to rise, they imme- 

 diately lower their sails, and, shrinking into the body of the shell, sink at 

 once to the bottom. Their extreme timidity makes it very difficult to take 

 them alive ; for whenever any person approaches, they immediately leave 

 the surface of the water , and although seamen have often got very near 

 them, yet when they arrived within a certain distance and stretched out 

 their hands to secure the fish, they constantly disappointed the person 

 by sinking to the bottom."* This yacht-club of Argonauts makes a very 

 pretty picture, but there are not wanting plain matter of fact Naturalists, 

 who deny that the animal sails at all. 



Attention was at last attracted to the subject, examination became the 

 parent of doubt, and M. de Blainville, among others, signalized himself 

 by the reasons which he gave in support of his opinion, that the Ocy- 

 thoe of Rafinesque does not belong to the shell in which it is found. 

 Mr. Cranch's observations on the genus Ocythoe, made during the ex- 

 pedition to Congo, under Captain Tuckey, (who, with nearly the whole of 

 his companions, paid with the forfeit of his life, for a spirit of enterprize 

 which knew not how to yield,) were embodied by Dr. Leach in a paper 

 published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1817, together with a 

 paper by Sir Everard Home on the ova of the Sepia. It may be as well 

 to cite the description of the habits of the animal from the first of these 

 papers, that the reader may have before him the progress of opinion 

 upon this subject. 



" Pliny, Aldrovandus, Lister, Rumphius, D'Argenville, Bruguiere, 

 ** Bosc, Cuvier and Shaw, have described a species of this genus,f that 

 '" is often found in the Argonauta Argo, (common Paper Nautilus,) 

 ^* and which they have regarded as its animal ; since no other inhabi- 

 ** tant has been observed in it. Sir Joseph Banks, and some other 



* Wood's Zoo|:raphy, London, 1807, Vol. II, p, 579. f Ocythoe. 



