NAUTILUS. 



Plate I. 



Genus NAUTILUS, Aristotle. 



Testa discoidea, interdum umbilicata, hit us margariiacea, 

 extus opaco-lactea, postice ferrugineo tincta et trans- 

 versim Jtammata ; polythalamia, septis concavis, me- 

 dio tubo siplionali perforates ; anfraetibus tribus, con- 

 tiguis, spiraliter involutis, ultimo alios obtegeute. 



Shell discoid, sometimes umbilicated, pearly within, opake 

 cream-colour without, stained and transversely flamed 

 posteriorly with rust-colour, many-chambered, septa 

 concave, perforated in the middle by a siphonic tube ; 

 whorls three, contiguous, spirally involuted, the last 

 covering the others. 



Two thousand two hundred years ago, during the glo- 

 rious reign of Alexander, when Plato was lecturing at 

 Athens, and the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum were 

 flourishing with the refinements of art, natural history was 

 beginning to be studied as a science of observation by 

 Aristotle. His area of research, so far as regarded ma- 

 rine animals, had been restricted to the basin of the Me- 

 diterranean, when the ambitious couqueror of Persia and 

 India resolved to enlarge it. Alexander, we are told, 

 wished to encourage his learned preceptor to write a His- 

 tory of Animals ; " and the more effectually to assist him, 

 he supplied him with eight hundred talents, and in his 

 Asiatic expedition employed above a thousand men to 

 collect animals either in fishing, hunting, or hawking, 

 that were carefully transmitted to the philosopher." May 

 it not have been on this occasion that Aristotle was fur- 

 nished with the Nautilus of the southern Asiatic Islands ? 

 With the Argonaut of the Mediterranean he must have 

 been already acquainted ; and having the animals of both 

 before him, he describes them with an accuracy that was 

 not surpassed, until in 1828 a Nautilus was captured in 

 Marekini Bay, at the island of Erromaugo, New Hebri- 

 des, by Mr. George Bennett, and was dissected by Pro- 

 fessor Owen. " There are two kinds of Polypes (Cuttles) 

 which are in shells," says Aristotle in his ' Historia Ani- 

 malium;' "one has a shell (Argonauta) which is not na- 

 turally adherent to it, it feeds very frequently near the 

 land, and being cast by the waves on the sand, the shell 

 slips, and it dies ; but the other (Nautilus) is in a shell in 

 which it exists after the manner of a snail, and outwardly 

 extends its arms." The only discovery of a living Nautilus 

 (luring this long intervening period was made in the eigh- 

 teenth century by Rumphius, a Dutch merchant and na- 



turalist resident at Amboyna. Now, thanks to the exer- 

 tions of Mr. Bennett, of Australia, and to the anatomical 

 labours of Professors Owen and Valenciennes, and M.Van 

 der Hoeven, the animal is not so uncommon, and both it- 

 organization and habits are fully known. 



The Nautilus is the sole living representative, with a 

 contiguously whorled shell, of the great extinct tribe of 

 Ammonites. The animal is a Cuttle, fitting into the aper- 

 ture of the shell ; the outer portion encloses a well-deve- 

 loped head and pair of horny mandibles, some fifty or 

 sixty labial tentacles, and upwards of thirty brachial ten- 

 tacles, a pair of large eyes, and a number of delicate 

 structures, comprising organs of smelling, hearing, etc., 

 and over all is a capacious leathery hood or lid. The 

 lower part of the body, enclosing the viscera in connec- 

 tion with the funnel or vent-tube, is enveloped by a man- 

 tle which secretes the shell, and is produced at the back 

 into a fold overlapping the black convexity of the shell. 

 Pound the circumference of the abdominal portion of the 

 animal is a muscular girdle attached to the shell, and con- 

 nected to it at the bottom is a flexible cord, which passe - 

 into the siphonic tube of the chambers of the shell, reach- 

 ing throughout its entire convolution. 



Considerable light has been thrown on the habits and 

 geographical distribution of the Nautili within thi 

 few years by Dr. Bennett, of Australia. "The A. / 

 pi/ius, macromphalus, and umbi/icatus," he says, "are tin 

 best-known species. The first species is the most com- 

 mon, and has the widest range; the second species i-> 

 more limited in its range, and rarer ; the third, although 

 found in collections, is scarcer than the two preceding, 

 and has a range peculiar to itself. The range of N. Pom- 

 pilius embraces the islands of the Eastern Archipelago, 

 Erromango, Aueitum, and other islands of the New He- 

 brides, and also the Feejee group. A", macromphalus is 

 found about the Isle of Pines and New Caledonia ; anil 

 the rare N. umbilicatus in the Solomon Archipelago, New 

 Georgia, New Britain, New Ireland, and probably to the 

 eastward of these groups of islands." No Nautilus, add-, 

 that assiduous observer, has been found at the Navigator 

 group of islands. 



The animal of Nautilus, hitherto so rare, is now found 

 to be an article of food among the natives of the New lie- 

 brides, New Caledonia, and Feejees. Dr. Bennett relates 

 (Pro. Zool. Soc. 1859, p. 227), that when at Errom: 

 he observed about the fires of the natives the remains of 



June, 18C1. 



