314 LECTURE XXIII. 



question of the affinities of the Nautilus was obscured by the gro- 

 tesque, and, as they have since proved to be, fictitious figures of the 

 animal, subsequently published by De Montfort and Dr. Shaw, and 

 the evidence of Rumphius seems to have been rejected by the natural- 

 ists of the French circumnavigatory expedition under Captain Freycinet, 

 who, on their return in 1831, published a description and figures of part 

 of an unknown molluscous animal, presumed to be that of the Nautilus 

 Pompilius ; and which, had their conjecture been verified, would have 

 indicated the chambered shell of the Nautilus to have been an ap- 

 pendage to some huge Gasteropod, allied to the Carinaria. 



If the claims of the Ammonite and its extinct congeners to take 

 rank in a higher class of Mollusca, had appeared to some zoologists 

 to be established by the figure of the animal of the Spirula, pub- 

 lished by Peron, it might, at the period to which I allude, have 

 been objected that this evidence, likewise, had been invalidated by 

 Fremenville's assertion to Brongniart, cited by De Blainville *, that 

 the animal of the Spirula was wholly different from Peron's descrip- 

 tion of it. 



If an appeal had been made from the unsatisfactory and conflicting 

 evidence derivable from the existing chambered siphoniferous shells 

 to the simple univalve of the Argonauta, which resembles them in its 

 symmetrical figure, it might, on the one hand, have been objected that 

 the correspondence of outward form alone, without the camerated and 

 siphonated structure, was insufficient to support the conclusion of the 

 cephalopodic nature of the Nautilus or Spirula, since the shell of the 

 Carinaria might have been adduced as much more closely resembling 

 that of the Argonauta ; and, on the other hand, the scepticism of the 

 majority of conchologists as to the Argonaut shell being actually 

 fabricated by the Cephalopod usually found in it, might, until a very 

 recent period, have been adduced to show how little value could be 

 attached to the superficial resemblance between the Argonaut shell, 

 and that of the Nautilus, in the determination of the Cephalopodic 

 character of the constructor of the latter ; and, by inference, of those 

 of the allied extinct chambered shells. Most acceptable, therefore, 

 at this conjuncture, was the arrival of the molluscous inhabitant of the 

 Nautilus Pompilius, and a just subject of congratulation to us when 

 we reflect on the share which this College has had in supplying the 

 much wanted information. 



The long-sought-for animal was captured in the South Seas by 

 Mr. George Bennett, a member of the College, and by him presented 



* Malacologie, t. i. p. 381., 8vo. 1825. Nouvelles Annales du Museum, t. iii. 

 p. 20. 4to 1834. 



