SOME STRANGE MARRIAGE -CUSTOMS 269 



remarkable cradle, translucent and beautifully sculptured, 

 she attaches to her person by means of a pair of arms which 

 are expanded to form great lobes, almost but not quite 

 completely covering the shell. The earlier naturalists 

 believed that this shell served as a boat, and that the 

 lobated arms were spread as sails ! This supposed fact 

 naturally caught the fancy of the poets, who seized upon 

 it to point a moral and adorn a tale. Byron celebrated 

 these imaginary feats of seamanship in the familiar lines : 



The tender Nautilus who steers his prow, 

 The sea-born sailor of his shell-canoe. 



and Pope bids us : 



Learn of the little Nautilus to sail, 



Spread the thin oar, and catch the driving gale. 



Sir Richard Owen years ago, however, dispelled these 

 pretty fancies, though the facts are surely as wonder- 

 ful as the fables they have replaced. They afford, too, 

 one of the most striking secondary sexual characters to 

 be met with among the Mollusca ; nowhere else, indeed, 

 among the members of this group is so strange a cradle 

 to be met with. 



But little, unfortunately, is known of the behaviour of 

 these animals, which are by far the most active of the 

 Mollusca, and which also display no small degree of 

 intelligence. Their eyes, which are of great size and 

 complex structure, are undoubtedly far more effective 

 organs of vision than are possessed by any other Molluscs. 

 It is possible, therefore, that the sexes discover one another 

 by sight ; and it is certain that something in the nature 



