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CHAPTER V. 



THE NAUTILUS AND ITS ALLIES. 



" The tender Nautilus who steers his prow, 

 The sea-born sailor of his shell canoe, 

 The ocean Mab, the faiiy of the sea, 

 Seems far less fragile, and, alas ! more free. 

 He, when the light'ning wing'd tornadoes sweep 

 The surge, is safe his port is in the deep 

 And triumphs o'er the armadas of mankind 

 Which shake the world, yet crumble in the wind." 



No department of natural history lias been more fully and 

 assiduously investigated of late years than that which relates to 

 the lower forms of animal life, and especially to such as people 

 the teeming waters of the ocean. The broad tidal belt of the 

 sea-shore, alternately covered by the waves and left bare by the 

 tide, in all its varied aspects of sand-flats and shingles, oozy 

 shallows, and rugged festooned rocks, has in particular been 

 diligently explored ; and the observations which have been made 

 on the structure and habits of the different animals thus ob- 

 tained have made a new and quite wonderful addition to our 

 knowledge of organic life. A multitude of creatures have been 

 brought to light whose existence was previously unsuspected, 

 and amongst those which have long been familiar, but unheeded, 

 the discovery has been made of a world of interest and beauty, 

 which is hardly surpassed throughout the whole extent of the 

 animal creation. In many cases, too, these observations and 

 researches have led to the most important results in correcting 

 and enlarging the current views of natural history, as a philoso- 

 phical study at one time exploding some ingenious and long- 

 cherished theory at another handing over a whole tribe of 

 creatures from one division of nature to another ; now com- 

 pelling a total revision of the accepted systems of classification 

 and now disclosing a fact which has let in, as it were, a flood 

 of light on some obscure point in the animal economy, and gone 



