378 LEISURE-TIME STUDIES. 



And you are doubtless familiar with Montgomery's eulogy of 

 the animal in his "Pelican Island" : 



"Light as a flake of foam upon the wind, 

 Keel upward from the deep, emerged a shell 

 Shaped like the moon ere half her horn is filled ; 

 Fraught with young life, it righted as it rose, 

 And moved at will along the yielding water. 

 The native pilot of this little bark 

 Put out a tier of oars on either side, 

 Spread to the wafting breeze a twofold sail, 

 And mounted up and glided down the billow 

 In happy freedom, pleased to feel the air, 

 And wander in the luxury of light." 



I question if you can find more elegant metaphor or 

 more poetic description of a natural object in the English 

 language than are contained in these quotations. The 

 poetry is excellent, the ideas are clear and terse, and the 

 imagery is delicate. But what shall we say of the poetry 

 when we discover that the facts are utterly erroneous ? The 

 argonaut does not sail on the surface of the sea. Did it 

 hoist its two broadened arms, as Montgomery describes, in 

 sail-like fashion, its voyage would come to a premature end, 

 since its shell-boat would drop away from its body into the 

 depths of the sea. It does not use its other six arms as 

 tiers of oars, but propels itself backwards in the water by a 

 kind of hydraulic engine, which it possesses in common with 

 all other cuttles, or crawls head downwards over the floor of 

 the sea, in mundane fashion, by aid of the arms and their 

 ample provision of suckers. 



Now this, I imagine, is a crucial instance of the effects of 

 science in modifying poetry. You read the poem in happy 

 ignorance of the zoology of the cuttle-fishes, and you are 

 more than satisfied with the poet's work. But "light" if 

 not " sweetness," dawns at length, and you learn that the 

 poetic faculty has been lavishing its tenderness and grace on 

 a myth. What are the natural thoughts which arise in the 

 mind in such a case ? I answer that unless there be any 



