298 CLASS V. CEPHALOPODA. ORDER I. POLYTHALAMIA. 
expansions of the belt, was all that remained of the original frame-work, 
he admirably succeeded, by a train of analogical reasoning, to establish 
the relation of the whole. His celebrated ‘ Memoir on the Pearly Nau- 
tilus*’ was published in London in 1832 by the Royal College of Sur- 
geons, and to the severe disappointment of the author, the illustrious 
Cuvier died but a few days before it issued from the press. 
Although the animal of the Nautilus was an important acquisition to 
conchological science, it would have been far more acceptable if accom- 
panied with the shell: a doubt immediately arose amongst naturalists, as 
to whether the position which Mr. Owen had assigned to the animal in 
the shell was the true one. ‘‘ Mais dans quelle position,” asks De Blain- 
ville, ‘‘ le Nautile est-il dans sa coquille?” ‘‘ And if,” says Mr. Gray, 
‘« the relative position of the animal of the Nautilus be correctly assigned by 
Mr. Owen with respect to its shell,” it must offer a similar anomaly to the 
genera Patella and Lottia. 
In 1840 two more specimens of the Nautilus were procured after a long 
and arduous search, by a Dutch gentleman at New Guinea. One was sent 
to the public museum of Leyden, and the other to Paris; but as these 
also were destitute of their calcareous envelope, an investigation of them 
could add little to what had been already advanced by Mr. Owen. M.Va- 
lenciennes, however, with a laudable desire, probably, of emulating his 
predecessor, undertook the dissection, and a skilful memoir was the 
result, though not containing much of novelty beyond a difference in his 
calculation of the tentacles, and the demonstration of an organ of hear- 
ingt. His observations are conducted with accuracy and plainness, but 
the memoir is not so rich in that eloquent analogical reasoning which so 
vividly characterizes the writings of his contemporary. The opportunity 
* The very elaborate character of this memoir directly stamped its author as the first zoo- 
tomist of the day. The smallest nerve has its immediate office assigned to it, the simplest 
organ its peculiar function; the component systems are traced with the most rigorous accu- 
racy, and the inferences that are deduced from a consideration of the whole, exhibit a fertility 
of imagination that renders an abstruse subject as pleasing as it is full of scientific interest. 
+ Mr. Owen says on this head, ‘‘ With respect to the sense of hearing, I have not been 
able to detect a distinct organ for that faculty.” 
