330 LECTURE XXIII. 



of the contraction of the animal within its shell. The consequent 

 pressure of the dense anterior muscular segment upon the soft 

 and yielding visceral cavity, resisted at the same time by the 

 unyielding posterior plate at every point, save that from which the 

 siphon was continued, Avould propel into that tube as much fluid as it 

 might be capable of receiving. These consequences would follow 

 the instinctive retraction of the animal when alarmed ; and if they 

 should take place while it was floating on the surface, it would im- 

 mediately begin to descend. If, desiring to rise again from the 

 bottom, the Nautilus should protrude its body from the mouth of the 

 shell, extend the folds of its mantle, and spread abroad its tentacula, 

 it would withdraw the pressure from the abdomen, and, by the act of 

 advancing, create a tendency to a vacuum in the posterior part of 

 the shell. The fluid in the siphon would then, if that tube were con- 

 tractile, return into the pericardial cavity, tiie gas in the chambers 

 would expand, and the specific gravity of the animal be sufficiently 

 diminished to cause the commencement of its ascent, which would 

 doubtless be accelerated by the reaction of the res23iratory currents 

 upon the water below. 



Neither the contents, nor the vital properties of the siphon 

 are however yet known : an artery and vein are assigned for 

 its life and nutrition : but the structure of the membranous 

 siphon, in the specimens from which I have had the opportunity of 

 examining it in a recent state, presents, beyond the first chamber, an 

 inextensible and almost friable texture, apparently unsusceptible of 

 dilatation and contraction : it is also coated beyond the extremity of 

 the short testaceous siphon with a thin calcareous deposit. A graver 

 objection to the hydrostatic action of the siphon is founded upon its 

 structure in certain extinct species of Nautilus, as the JV. Sipho, in 

 which it is provided through its whole extent with an inflexible outer 

 calcareous tube, rendering it physically impossible that the gas of the 

 chambers could be affected by any difference in the quantity of fluid 

 contained in the siphon. In the Nautilus strialus, also, the calcareous 

 siphon is a continuous tube, slightly dilated in each chamber. 



From these facts I incline rather to the conclusion, that the sole 

 function of the air-chambers is that of the balloon, and that the 

 power which the animal enjoys of altering at will its specific gravity, 

 must be analogous to that possessed by the fresh-water testaceous 

 Gasteropods, and that it depends chiefly upon changes in the extent 

 of the surface wdiich the soft parts expose to the water, according as 

 they may be expanded to the utmost, and spread abroad beyond the 

 aperture of the shell, or be contracted into a dense mass within its 

 cavity. The Nautilus may likewise possess the additional advantage 

 of producing a slight vacuum in the posterior parts of the chamber of 



