300 SUPPLEMENT 
and lets itself be carried along. It is frequently seen, as the 
same author tells us, in this position. But he also admits 
that-it can swim, and in this case its shorter feet spread out 
like arose; the hinder feet, palmated, and much longer, issue 
forth from the shell, the animal suffers them to drag along in 
the water, and thus, by their means, directs its fragile bark. 
Finally, he also describes its navigation by the aid of the 
wind, but differently from his predecessors, since he says, that 
in this case it derives the principal assistance from the raised 
edges of its vessel, which it presents to the gale; then it 
withdraws its body very much back into the shell, and steers 
its bark with two arms, which serve to direct it. He adds, 
however, that the palmations of the two long arms might be 
of as much use to it in sailing as in rowing, though his own 
opinion is, that this molluscum effects its navigation without 
sail, and with the raised edge of its shell. 
It is never met with but at sea, and always solitary, shoot- 
ing the water with force through its excretory conduit. Its 
ink is of a bluish brown. Rumph says that he found in the 
belly of some individuals some round white eggs, united in a 
mass, and marked at the upper edge with a black point, 
while, in the volutation of the shell itself, there was at the 
same time another small mass of eggs or spawn, resembling 
in form and colour the spawn of fishes, contained in a com- 
mon envelope, extremely fine. He adds, that even when the 
shell is not bigger than one’s finger, an ovary is nevertheless 
found there, which reposes on the shell in the form of a 
cushion. All this, however, is by no means clear, and more 
especially, as he says a little farther on, that new observations 
have proved to him that the eggs are found out of the body, 
in the hollow of the keel, but attached to the animal. ~ 
Notwithstanding all these observations, which prove that 
Rumph really saw an octopus with dilated tentacula, he has 
left no figure of it but one done by his son; nor has the sub- 
ee 
