In the chapter in which the ahove passage occurs, and in other parts of this 

 extraordinary work, so many characteristic details are given, both of the habits, 

 and of the structure internal as well as external, of the Cephalopods, as render 

 it very improbable that the accurate and penetrating author would have ad- 

 mitted among his Malakia an animal that possessed not those affinities of 

 structure which fully entitled it to rank there. But the only Cephalopod ad- 

 hering to, and covered with a shell, that Aristotle could have known, is Nautilus 

 Pompilius. The beauty and singularity of the shell would naturally excite his 

 curiosity ; whilst the means which were afforded to tliis illustrious philosopher 

 of attaining a knowledge of the animal products of Asia, and the occurrence 

 of the Pearly Nautilus in the Persian Gulf, render it possible that his inquiries 

 might be gratified to such an extent as to enable him to perceive its true place 

 in the natural system. 



Pliny and the ancient writers on Natural History who succeeded Aristotle did 

 little more than repeat his account of the singular habits of his first species of 

 Nautilus — the Argonauta of the moderns, whilst his second species was passed 

 over in silence. 



Belon*, one of the earliest authors on Natural History subsequent to the 

 revival of literature, was the first who described and figured the shell of 

 Nautilus Pompilius ; and he installed it in the vacancy which the silence of pre- 

 ceding naturalists during a lapse of ages had occasioned in the animal kingdom 

 of Aristotle, and denominated it " Nautilus alter seu secundus" ; but he was un- 

 acquainted with the soft parts. An opinion, therefore, in so great a measiu^e 

 conjectural, was naturally combated by succeeding authors. Rondeletius saw 

 too little analogy between the heavy, pearly, and chambered shell of the Nautilus, 

 and the light, fragile, monothalamous dwelUng of the Argonaut, to concur in 

 this approximation ; and somewhat arbitrarily referring the peculiarities of the 

 first of Aristotle's genera of Polypi to the second, conceives it impossible so 

 small an animal could drag on so heavy a shellf. It was not, therefore, until 



* De Aqnatilibus, p. 381. (1553.) 



t " Sed haec secunda quam adfert. Nautilus Aristotelis esse nequit, neque enim Pectini cavo ulla ex 

 parte comparari potest. Deinde cum Nautili corpore sint exiguo, trahere concham tantse magnitu- 

 dinis non possent. Hoc non est artificiose fingere : qui enim fingit saltern probabilia debet dicere." — 

 Rondelet. de Testaceis, p. 98. 



