THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 29 



Two species of Argonauts have been recorded from Victorian 

 waters — namely, Argonauta nodosa, Sol. (long known to collectors 

 as A. tubei'cidata), and A. argo, Linne. The former is the species 

 which so frequently visits the Bay, and occasionally appears in 

 large numbers, though the quantities found recently probably 

 greatly exceed those of any previous year. It has a wide dis- 

 tribution, being recorded from Chili, Brazil, Cape of Good Hope, 

 Indian Ocean, Moluccas, New Zealand, Tasmania, and Australia. 

 Of Australian specimens the National Museum, Melbourne, 

 possesses examples varying in size from very young to the largest, 

 from Western and South Australia, Tasmania, Clark Island, 

 Phillip Island, and various parts of Port Phillip Bay ; several of 

 these shells contain the animal, and in one or two instances the 

 ova. 



Argonauta argo has been recorded from the Lakes' Entrance, 

 Gippsland, but it is rarely found in Victorian waters, though why 

 this should be so is difficult to understand, seeing that it is met 

 with on -the coasts of Western and South Australia, New South 

 Wales, and Queensland as far north as Torres Straits. 



This species has also a very extensive range outside Australia, 

 being found plentifully at certain times of the year in the Medi- 

 terranean, and has also been recorded from the tropical parts of 

 the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic Oceans, and the Cape of Good 

 Hope. 



The Argonauts belong to the order Dibranchiata, which 

 embraces those forms which are furnished with only two gills, 

 and to the sub-order Octopoda, having only eight arms. These 

 arms are all furnished with suckers similar to the common Cuttle- 

 fish. It is the female only which constructs a shell, which is 

 readily recognized by its thin, wrinkled, single-chambered 

 structure, and is really nothing more than an egg-cradle for the 

 protection of the ova, though at the same time it affords pro- 

 tection to the animal itself, and perhaps also for the newly- 

 hatched young. In no sense is it equivalent to the ordinary 

 Molluscan shell. It is not organically connected to the shell in 

 any way, as is the case with the Pearly Nautilus, merely retaining 

 its position in the shell by means of its two broadly-webbed 

 dorsal arms, which are furnished with suckers from the base com- 

 pletely round the extreme margin of the web. 



These clasp and cover the whole shell, just as the shells of the 

 Cyprgea are covered by the mantle of the animal. By the webbed 

 extremities of these two dorsal arms the shell of the Argonaut is 

 secreted, and from the observations made on A. argo by Madame 

 Power, published in 1838 and commented on very fully by 

 Professor Owen, it is shown that the animal quickly repairs any 

 damage sustained by the shell. According to the same authority 

 the young Argonauts are excluded from the eggs naked about 



